How Modern Medicine Turned Dying into a Philosophical Traffic Jam

Euthanasia—there’s a subject for a Sunday morning coffee chat. It stirs up arguments quicker than a diesel in a vegan restaurant. We’re talking here about the fundamental right to die with dignity, an idea that’s as old as civilization but has somehow become one of the hottest issues on today’s ethical grill. Ancient Greeks and Romans had their thoughts on it, and it’s fair to say they weren't exactly shrinking violets about letting people shuffle off when their time came. But, in modern society, we’ve got doctors, hospitals, and some exceptionally clever machines that can keep you alive long past what nature intended. And so, the debate rages on, increasingly tangled in the vast web of bioethics, individual autonomy, and human rights.

The Sixth Congress of Bioethics recently chewed over this very topic, led by Jennifer Hincapié Sanchez from the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s University Program of Bioethics. Sanchez, a bit of a force in this field, emphasizes that euthanasia is all about an individual's right to choose their fate, especially in those grim, bleak moments when life has turned into something that looks more like suffering than living. You can see why people are drawn to the idea, can’t you? After all, who wouldn’t want a say in their own endgame?

Hincapié Sanchez makes an important point: the question of euthanasia is far from new. But, as medicine leaps forward, outpacing most people’s ability to even pronounce the name of the latest device keeping them alive, the ethics around death have had to evolve. Medical technology can now prolong life in ways that would have seemed pure science fiction a hundred years ago. Diseases that once had people lining up for a place in the afterlife are now just unpleasant blips on a lifespan. Heart disease? Kidney failure? Things we can now control to the point where they’re almost inconvenient rather than fatal. But this technology brings us to a tricky spot: just because we can keep someone alive, does it mean we should?

In the olden days—and by that, I mean ancient civilizations—death wasn’t complicated by machines and medical staff in latex gloves. It was just the natural end of a natural life. People weren’t expecting doctors to come around and rewire their hearts or fix them up with artificial kidneys. No, they’d live, they’d get sick, and, well, they’d die. The whole business was relatively uncomplicated. Today, though, we’ve got artificial respirators, feeding tubes, and all manner of invasive treatments that could keep you going indefinitely, albeit often with the kind of quality of life that makes you question the very point of it all.

That’s the crux of modern bioethics. It’s not just about whether we can prolong life but whether it’s always desirable. Hincapié Sanchez and the experts gathered at this Congress threw out some hard questions that hit the heart of the issue. When someone is in unbearable pain, with no hope of recovery, should they be allowed to choose the dignified exit? Or do we insist on strapping them to a machine, essentially making them a permanent resident in the purgatory of life support, because it’s technically possible to do so?

Samuel Ponce de León Rosales, heading up the PUIREE (University Program for Research on Epidemiological and Emerging Risks), weighed in as well. According to him, there’s a big question to grapple with here: Should a dignified death be considered a human right? Now, it’s worth noting that this is no small matter. If the right to die with dignity becomes a human right, we’re not just giving people permission to control their own exit. We’re saying that the choice itself is as fundamental as freedom of speech, religion, or the right to vote. And, as Ponce de León pointed out, opinions on this are about as varied as flavors in a curry house. But we must look at them closely if we want to arrive at any real conclusions.

Then there’s Patricio Santillán Doherty, the National Commissioner for Bioethics. He’s keen on reminding us that our brave new world of modern ethics also means preparing for things like pandemics—situations that bring up ethical dilemmas so complex you could write an entire library on them. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, for example, sparked questions that no one could have anticipated, and it wasn’t just about which variant was next on the horizon. The pandemic underscored how much our healthcare systems—and our ethics—are unprepared to make these kinds of life-or-death decisions on such a grand scale. It’s not a stretch to see that euthanasia could play into future crises, where resources might dictate who gets life support and who doesn’t.

But let’s bring it back to the individual level. Imagine you’re lying there, tubes and wires everywhere, the doctor telling you, “You’re stable. You’ll live!” But live how? Chained to a bed, no dignity left, unable to do so much as change the channel on the TV. Does that really sound like life to you? Is it worth all the pain, the loss of dignity, and the sheer cost to healthcare systems just to keep someone “alive” in the loosest sense of the word?

So, here we are, in a world where we must think very carefully about what “life” actually means and what “death with dignity” entails. The stakes are as high as they get: should people have the right to end their suffering on their own terms? Do we have the ethical responsibility to allow a dignified death, or are we obliged to do everything possible to keep someone alive, regardless of the circumstances?

Look, there are no easy answers. But this debate? It’s not going away. If anything, it’s only going to become more intense as our technology continues to defy nature and as society grapples with what it truly means to live—and, more importantly, what it means to die.