48 years ago we discussed the situation of Karen Ann Quinlan in university classrooms, which had repercussions around the world. It was a young American woman who was left in a coma due to a series of unfortunate factors. Months later, after losing all hope that she would regain consciousness, her parents asked to be taken off the ventilator, which the hospital doctors who treated her refused. The parents of the unfortunate girl turned to the judges and after a long litigation they managed to make them comply with their request. Amazingly, Karen Ann lived another decade fed intravenously. The high-profile case marked a turning point in the reexamination of concepts that govern life and death in medical practice. The possibility of euthanasia, which has existed since the time medicine existed as a rational and scientific practice, began to be considered.

“We cannot ask health workers to kill their patients,” says Pope Francis about euthanasia

Euthanasia means a good death, which can come as a natural event or an accident. For some, an unexpected and immediate death is the best, for others a peaceful death, surrounded by loved ones. And this is the meaning that this Greek word originally had in antiquity, and today it is reserved for “intentional intervention that puts an end to a person’s life with no prospect of recovery.” In Quinlan’s case and all those in whom consciousness, understood as a person’s perception of himself and the ability to share it, has been lost, suspending the care that keeps an inert body alive does not fit with the basic purpose of euthanasia to alleviate suffering, since it can be assumed that there is no suffering. In reality, it can be said that this physical entity has lost the status of a person, but not a human being, and the disconnection is a mechanical process that saves society and the patient unnecessary costs. But what’s more, as happened with the aforementioned young woman, who died terrifyingly reduced to 34 kilograms, the humiliating course is avoided. There is almost no debate about the convenience of this action and it is understood as such almost universally.

The Peruvian judiciary recognizes a woman’s right to a dignified death and determines the development of a protocol on euthanasia

True euthanasia and the resulting debate occur when the person is conscious and wishes to die voluntarily, and this last term is an essential condition. No matter how much the topic turns, in these cases we will always give a specific type of euthanasia: assisted suicide. This is ethically valid, whether it is a passive procedure, the suspension of a procedure that keeps a person alive, or if there is an active procedure, directly causing death by chemical, physical or any other method. Basically, the situation does not change ethically even if it is the subject himself who procures death with the help of another person, or if it is another person who, at his request and with his full consent, applies the chosen lethal means. Then we enter a complex, difficult and different field of debate, the ethics of suicide and the possibility that there are entities that help make it better. Let’s go inside. (OR)