Interview with Luciano Eusebi

More than a thousand people will be killed in Belgium by 2011 because this is their will. By the end of the year, more than a thousand patients will have undergone euthanasia.
«A sign – states Luciano Eusebi, full professor at the Faculty of Law at the Catholic University of Milan interviewed by ilSussidiario.net – that the predicted euthanasia drift has occurred in the country; in certain cases, death has turned into a sort of automatism."
The news was reported by the Belgian newspaper "Le soir". According to the newspaper, the prediction was arrived at starting from a simple consideration: since January 2011, 85 people a year have died a "sweet death". These are predominantly men (54 percent) and people aged between 60 and 79 years. The majority - 80 percent - are affected by a tumor which, in 92 percent of cases, will lead to their death, even in the short term. Finally, 52 percent of euthanasia administrations are carried out at home or in some nursing homes for the elderly. «The data - explains Eusebi - indicates how the reasons for the "no", which we have always tried to support towards euthanasia, were justified. We have always been worried, in fact, that everything could be resolved, ultimately, in a sort of "scrapping" of the weak subjects".
Eusebi goes into specifics: «The attention to proportionate therapeutic treatments and to avoiding extremist ones is acceptable». But exceeding this threshold generates serious consequences; «It leads to considering weak subjects as ballast. It is no coincidence that psychological research underlines how the so-called "right to die" transforms, both with respect to the patient and his family, into a psychological pressure to free the social context from the weight of his condition. This trend makes the transition from consensual to automatic euthanasia possible."
One wonders whether such a risk has been averted in Italy. «The law on the end of life – reflects Eusebi – gives importance to possible advance declarations, of course; but within the context of a judgment that remains based on the responsibility of the doctor and on an evaluation of the proportionality of the therapies. Those who expected a law that would undermine the legal principles in force on the impracticability of a doctor-patient relationship aimed at death were disappointed. The law, therefore, should protect us, at least in its theoretical statements, from drifts like the Belgian one."
But the law is not enough. «These trends, in practice, must be contained in an educational and cultural dimension; and, even more, support for family contexts. By helping the family we avoid tendencies of abandonment, because this constitutes the first dimension of welcome where conditions of existential precariousness exist."
For terminally ill patients and their loved ones, some fundamental supports already exist: «We have networks of hospices and palliative care centers where the patient can be followed, freeing him from suffering and allowing him, even in advanced disease conditions, to maintain a capacity for reflection and dialogue. All of this isn't even exceptionally expensive. However, it is obvious that this is a commitment to society."
According to the professor, however, there are no alibis: «the resources are there. A welcoming society is possible." But, preliminarily, a reflection is necessary: ​​«What model of democracy and civil coexistence do we intend to adopt? The one in which the person counts for his material efficiency so, when this is no longer recoverable, his very existence loses meaning; or the one according to which the person is worth as such, and not for what he is capable of doing?