Short Communication
Debating Euthanasia in India: A Review of the Proceedings at the UNSECO Bioethics Forum, Manipal
Rohini Shukla*Lecturer, Fergusson College, Pune, India
- *Corresponding Author:
- Rohini Shukla
Lecturer, Fergusson College
Brahmanaad’, # 19, Sind Society
Aundh, Pune, India
Tel: +917259617201
E-mail: rohini.shukla@gmail.com
Received date: March 31, 2016; Accepted date: November 15, 2016; Published date: November 21, 2016
Citation: Rohini S (2016) Debating Euthanasia in India: A Review of the Proceedings at the UNSECO Bioethics Forum, Manipal . J Palliat Care Med 6:291. doi: 10.4172/2165-7386.1000291
Copyright: © 2016 Shukla R. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This review is about the discussion that followed my presentation at the UNESCO Bioethics Forum, Manipal. To contextualise, I begin with a brief account of the legal status of euthanasia in India, and then summarize the main argument of my presentation - if the moral objective of euthanasia is to end a patient's suffering by ending his or her life in the best possible way, then the form of euthanasia legal in India is inconsistent with this moral objective owing to the consequences it entails for the patient. Given this background, I elaborate on two issues that came up in the discussion - the missing framework of patients' rights, and the medical fraternity's reluctance to espouse multidisciplinary approaches in understanding the morality and legality of euthanasia. Contrary to popular belief as voiced at this forum, developing the framework of patients' rights, and simultaneously espousing multidisciplinary approaches, as I hope to show, would take the discussions of euthanasia in better informed directions.
