Four out of ten Kyivans support euthanasia

In the 1980s virtually every Western media outlet wrote about an extraordinary act by four Austrian nurses. They admitted in court that during six years they had killed fifty patients with strong sleeping pills. The only reason was that they wanted to put an end to the sufferings of defenseless and helpless people. Certainly, the public could not meet this with understanding. Not many believed in the good intentions of those who took the Hippocratic Oath, saying “I will never give a deadly drug to anybody who requests it.”

Euthanasia, the intentional painless killing of the hopelessly ill to stop their agony, is now also being discussed in Ukraine. As other countries, viewpoints differ greatly here, while the healthcare establishment is unanimous: there should be no euthanasia in Ukraine. The Ministry of Health explains its stand citing the same reasons as the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, which stated recently, “Russia still has a way to go to become a civilized society, in which a law on euthanasia is acceptable.”

However, the results of a poll recently conducted in Ukraine by the UNIAN Sociology Service of 1500 persons demonstrate that potential patients rather favor this idea. 43.7% of Kyivans approve the “easy death” (as the Greek word euthanasia translates), with 17.3% categorically opposed. Another question asked Kyiv residents was whether they would allow apply euthanasia to themselves, to which 41.9% answered yes.

“History remembers,” says candidate in legal sciences Ihor Petrovsky, “that in 1922 the Criminal Code contained a footnote saying that a homicide committed at the request [of the victim] was not punishable. However, this had to be removed within a few months, since there proved to be too many such alleged requests. In the lawyer’s opinion, an indication of the possible consequences of introducing euthanasia in Ukraine is the situation with the mentally ill, or rather those registered as such due to well-meaning relatives. According to data of the Psychiatrists Association of Ukraine, in 2001 alone it received 1402 petitions describing false diagnoses followed by depriving the patients of their belongings and even registration. Today, in Dr. Petrovsky’s words, the Criminal Code of Ukraine says that deliberate precipitation of somebody’s death, which euthanasia in fact is, does not relieve a medical worker from criminal responsibility. The law also has it that this can be through either action or inaction, and the punishment is ten years deprivation of freedom.

However, some doctors, who remain anonymous, admit that they practice passive euthanasia by stopping support of patients’ vital activities by means of medications and equipment. These brave doctors argue that it is no use watching patients suffer if there is no way to help them. However, candidate of medical sciences and first-rate cancer surgeon Yevhen Braun rightly asks who is going to judge here. Considering that Ukraine’s level of healthcare is no match for Europe’s — the state assigns 7.56 hryvnia per day per patient, and an oblast center hospital can boast at best one planigraph produced in the 1960-1970s — who is able to define exactly that a patient is absolutely hopeless? “My patients ask me to help them commit suicide every day,” says Dr. Braun. “But there are so many things we don’t know about cancer. Sometimes true miracles can happen here. Some of my patients were registered in the 1970s.” On the other hand, in the oncologist’s view, there is another problem able to defeat many weighty arguments against euthanasia, which is constant support to the patient by means of medication. The doctors, who realize that it is impossible to improve a patient’s condition, still have to spend assets to maintain and care for him or her.

However, there is a way out. A system of hospices exists throughout the world. Staying there, the mortally ill do not make additional problems for their relatives. Simultaneously, the comfort and special care make it possible to prolong their lives. In Kyiv there are only two such institutions, while it needs at least five or six. As for the provinces, there are hospices only in two oblast centers, Lviv and Lutsk.

In general, most Ukrainian physicians agree that euthanasia is not a way to solve the problems of the mortally ill. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine and co-author of the Physician’s Code of Ethics Liubomyr Pyrih believes that, in spite of the circumstances, any forms of euthanasia run counter to physicians’ ancient ethical norms.