In a recent interview, Dr. Justo Aznar of the Bioethics Observatory of the Catholic University of Valencia (CUV) pointed out that to “want a dignified death for a patient that is suffering is to give him the palliative care he requires.”
Here is a translation of the full text of his statements.
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In a recent interview, Dr. Justo Aznar, Director of the CUV’s Bioethics Observatory said that to ”want a dignified death for a patient that is suffering is to give him the palliative care he needs.” “A law on palliative care was proposed years ago in Spain, but it hasn’t been debated. Instead, the law on euthanasia was proposed and approved in the midst of the pandemic with an express procedure.
It’s absolutely inadmissible that a law on palliative care has not been put first into effect, to see if patients that receive it then ask for euthanasia. Palliative care really makes possible a dignified death, if a person’s state of health leads eventually to it,” he stressed.
Dr. Aznar said that this law has been approved “without” social or medical “consent.” It is very surprising that this Government did not take into account the Reports of the World Medical Association, of the General Council of Spanish Doctors, or of Spain’s Bioethics Commission.
It’s very grave that a State of law approves laws based on extreme cases. ”Medicine is a vocation of accompaniment and healing. Euthanasia is often the desperate cry of someone who isn’t being helped. It is very difficult to find people that ask for euthanasia,” he added.
Law on Euthanasia, A Slippery Slope
Dr. Aznar also said that when “a door is opened in bioethics, one knows what will happen at that moment, but what is not known is what will happen later, and it’s very difficult to close it again.”
In this connection, the Director of the CUV’s Bioethics Observatory said that the very “high requirements” at the origin of euthanasia laws “are relaxed over time until practically any person can take recourse to this practice.” “This isn’t a lucubration of those of us who are against euthanasia. We have the data of the two sociological laboratories, which have been and are Holland and Belgium on this issue, and we know the point it has reached.”
Euthanasia has already been accepted for children, newborns, persons with psychiatric disorders, dementia, and mental disability. This slippery slope can end up being applied to people who haven’t asked for it, so-called involuntary euthanasia. This is happening in Holland, where between 0.4% — 0.7% of euthanasia cases carried out were of this type,” he alerted
