This is a difficult subject to discuss as it evokes
uncomfortable thoughts in me...
So I’ll start with Star Trek.
One of the most memorable episodes in The Next Generation
also starred a favorite actor of mine, David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester
The Third of M*A*S*H fame). In “Half A Life”, he played the scientist Dr.
Timicin. In the episode, Deanna Troi’s mother, Lwaxana, falls in love with him –
and is stunned when she discovers “…that, approaching the age of 60, Timicin
is, upon returning to his planet, to undergo the ‘Resolution’, ritual suicide.”
The story progresses and in the BEST of Star Trek, calmly, clearly, and evenly
presents both side of the argument: “Each ends up finding the other's point of
view cruel: Lwaxana because she sees it as arbitrary murder in an uncertain
universe when death can come both well before and well after the designated
age, Timicin because she is denying people control of their fate and the
opportunity to end life with dignity.”
The movie “Soylent Green” mentions assisted suicide when the
main character, Roth discovers what Soylent Green is made out of… “Roth seeks
assisted suicide at a government clinic called ‘Home’.” (The aged friend
Solomon ‘Sol’ Roth (played by Edward G. Robinson) of the main character, New
York City Police Department detective Frank Thorn (played by Charlton Heston))
Alexander Zaitchik, in Salon.com did an article on 7/29/13
on this very subject and reviewed several old speculative pieces toward the end
of the article – though nothing new or even close to “mainstream” science
fiction (GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1726); BRAVE NEW WORLD (1931); MAKE ROOM! MAKE
ROOM! (1966)/”Soylent Green” (1973); THE CHILDREN OF MEN (1992); William F.
Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s movie “Logan’s Run.” (1976). The article was
actually more interested in trumpeting the cause of Anthropogenic Global
Warming than in assisted suicide…
At any rate, you can see that the subject doesn’t appear to
be currently engaging the speculative fiction community. I bring it up here
because it surfaced for an instant in discussions at DIVERSICON 2013, where I
and a friend spent two days. My primary interest was hearing author Jack
McDevitt whose work I fell in love with several years ago after reading ANCIENT
SHORES (1996). The conclusion of the discussion was somewhat prescriptive: if
intelligence is short-lived, then ritual and assisted suicide should be
unacceptable. If life is long, it should be acceptable. If life has reached
extreme length, it should be encouraged.
The catching point seems to be the definition of “long”. In
his 1981 ANALOG short story, “Petals of Rose”, three civilizations meet to
solve the problem of instantaneous communication. The work is sponsored by the
Lazarines, alien beings whose life expectancy is millennial; Humans whose life
expectancy is roughly 200 years; and the Rosans, whose entire life is lived in
two Human weeks. While the issue of assisted suicide never comes up – unless you
credit a Human-Lazarine war that Humans will lose as suicide – though it easily
begs the question.
My own personal thoughts are complex and while Zaitchik
implies that anyone who votes conservative right must disagree with his correct
liberal left viewpoint, as a conservative rightist, I have nowhere near the
assurance he seems to think I should have. My brother-in-law suffered for years
from AIDS (hemophiliac, lived 30 years past the diagnosis and helped science
realize that survival from full-blown, University of Minnesota diagnosed AIDS
was possible and not the certain death penalty it once was); my wife as well as
several friends and in-laws have suffered from cancer, some of them terribly at
the end. I am completely unsure about what it means for me personally nor what I
think the government should do, or allow…
In an article in Britain’s Spiked! Online magazine, author
Kevin Yuill, points out, “...how many of the 70 per cent who support a change
in the law would exercise the ‘right’ to die, if it were legal? In the US
states of Oregon and Washington, where assisted suicide is legal, less than two
per cent of those who qualify for it go through with it. Not even the most
prominent campaigners for a right to die choose to exercise it, opting instead
to hang on to what little life is left. This explains the wide disparity of
opinions on legalisation between the general public, who are generally
supportive, and those who have some experience of death – like those in the
hospice movement, doctors and other medical professionals – of whom a majority
are against a change in the law.”
Maybe it’s something that NEEDS to be explored in science
fiction. Maybe I could be one of the people to do it...
Resources: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(episode)
, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green,
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/29/global_warming_lsd_euthanasia_bring_on_the_death_panels/
, http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/hayley_cropper_and_the_fiction_of_assisted_suicide/14536#.U4sYp2dOXIV
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