Euthanasia or mercy killing must be made legal

3 weeks have passed since I have started working in Delhi State Cancer Institute, an apex hospital for treatment of all types of cancers... All kind of cancer patients come here, some at milder treatable stage but mostly at untreatable terminal stage.. These patients know that they are going to die and are waiting for the Lord to call them at His heavenly abode.. These patients in their final days have to experience burning hell in living form...They have severe pain all over the body which can't be relieved with strongest medicines.. Their mildest movement such as raising hands or shifting an inch on bed evokes pain which make them cry whole night.. They bleed in their cough, urine, faeces or external tumor heavily..Sometimes they are not able to defaecate and an opening has to be made through stomach to let the faeces out...They can't feed through mouth, so another opening has to be made in stomach to feed them..With every night their Haemoglobin falls and their kins have to donate blood to make them going for another day.. Psychologically such patient are completely broken and are nothing more than a breathing wax doll... For their kins and family , it's equally difficult...Apart from the pain of seeing your loved one writhing in pain, it's economically draining as well..Life for them comes at a halt with frequent hospital visits, hospital admissions and nursing care given to the patient..Witnessing so much human pain,misery and disfigurement of human body shook my soul and changed my whole perspective regarding life and death..That is, when I am a distant unrelated person, just an attending doctor...The kind of pain their kin, family and friends feel is beyond imagination...

      Life is considered a beautiful gift from the Lord to us, to be cherished and to be enjoyed in a manner fruitful to family and society...Every attempt must be made to preserve life and to maintain it's quality...No one else understands this better than us, the doctors...But what happens when living life becomes worse than dying...When the mother who couldn't bear the mildest wound on her son's body gets so fed up with the writhing pain of her son, that she wishes him to die soon but painless... Here comes the role of mercy killing or euthanasia...
  For the benefit of non medico readers let me give you an overview of euthanasia... Euthanasia or mercy killing is giving painless death to the patients in terminal diseases for whom there are no chances of survival...It can also be given for patients of complete paralysis and coma in whom the quality of life is so miserable that death may be desired instead... It can be Active euthanasia in which sleep and then death inducing injection is given or Passive euthanasia in which no injection is given but all supporting equipments like ventilators, oxygen etc is withdrawn...Any of these methods are not permitted legally in our nation, but is permitted in many other countries...

  Having said that, it's obvious that patients, their family and doctors are helpless in such situation and have to go through this living hell till death takes it's course...Efforts have been made by some patients, their relatives, NGOs to make euthanasia legal but none has borne any fruit yet...
  The biggest argument given by anti euthanasia lobby is that such law can be misused to kill healthy people in a corrupt country like ours...Secondly ethical issues regarding right of life are also there...
   I just want to say that a strong law without any loopholes must be made regarding this and euthanasia must be made legal..A few suggestions to prevent it's misuse are as following:
- Only one apex institute/hospital in each state may be licensed to certify that patient's disease is untreatable and quality of life even with treatment is extremely poor to be called humane..
- A minimum of three or more senior doctors from different specialties are required to verify terminal stage of disease..
-In case where patient can himself give consent, his consent should be obtained after proper psychiatric counseling + consent of spouse/two blood relatives must be obtained...
- In case where patient is in coma and can't give consent, then consent of minimum two first degree blood relatives + spouse must be mandatory..
- Adequate counseling through NGO, volunteer groups and support groups must be provided to patients and relatives beforehand..
- Any proven misuse of euthanasia must be dealt with severe punishments including but not limited to prison..
- Similar to right of life, there must be a right to death as well where each person should have a right of dignified, painless and peaceful death...

Hoping for euthanasia law to come into existence as soon as possible..We can not give such unfortunate patients new life, atleast we should be able to give them peaceful death..Many of us intellectuals wouldn't share this viewpoint of mine but the one who goes through this dirty game of life and death knows the best..In my experience which is 1-2 deaths everyday, at some point of time almost every patient or relative demanded some form of mercy killing in their last days... Some even wanted it to be done "off the records".. A law abiding doctor couldn't do it even when a human being inside him wanted to...I just want this conflict to end and be able to provide painless and peaceful death "on the records"..