Suicide and Euthanasia. The long but compelling road to Logan's Run.

I doubt if I can add any great wisdom to this debate, but am blogging it anyway because it was the very first issue we did at school, in a religion class in 1974, when we looked at the future of euthanasia. It was the start of my futurology life.

Suicide is inextricably linked to the euthanasia debate, mainly because it is impossible to know for certain what is in someone's mind, and that is the basis of the well known slippery slope. The stages are reasonably clear, even without any invocation of religious morality. Was it a genuine suicide, originating from that person's free thoughts, based solely on their own interests? Or was it a personal decision influenced by the interests of others, real or imagined? Or was it a personal decision made after pressure from friends and relatives who want the person to die peacefully rather than suffer, with the best possible interests of the person in mind? In which case, who first raised the possibility of suicide as a potential way out? Or a personal decision made after pressure applied because relatives want rid of the person, perhaps over-eager to inherit or wanting to end their efforts to care for them? Guilt can be a powerful force and can be applied very subtly indeed over a period of time. Or if the person is losing their ability to communicate a little, perhaps a friend or relative may help interpret their wishes to a doctor. From here, it is a matter of degree of communication skill loss and gradual increase of the part relatives play in guiding the doctor's opinion of whether the person genuinely wants to die. Eventually, the person might not be directly consulted because their relatives can persuade a doctor that they really want to die but can't say so effectively? And not much further along the path until people make their minds up what is in the best interests of another person as far as living or dying goes. It is a smooth path between these many small steps from genuine suicide to euthanasia. And that all ignores all the impact of possible alternatives such as pain relief, welfare, special care etc.

Once the state starts to get involved in deciding cases, even by abdicating it to doctors, it is a long but easy road to Logan's run, where death is compulsory at a certain age, or a certain care cost, or you've used up your lifetime carbon credit allocation.

My concern is that the situation we are in now is at one extreme of this slope. There have been a few very clear cases where someone obviously able to make up their own mind has made a thoroughly thought-through decision to end their life because of ongoing pain, poor quality of life and no hope of any cure or recovery, the only prospect being worsening condition leading to an undignified death. Few people would argue with their decision to die, and I certainly think they should be permitted to do so, without any fear for their friends or relatives being prosecuted.

If it stops there, I would have no objections. But it won't. There are rarely razor-sharp lines between cases; situations always get blurred sometimes because of the complexity of individual lives, and because judges have their own personalities and differ slightly in their judgements. There is inevitably another case slightly further down the line that seems reasonable to a particular judge in the circumstances, and once that point is passed, and accepted by the courts, other cases with slightly less-defined circumstances will use it to help argue their's. This is the path by which most laws evolve. They start in parliament and then after implementation, case law and a gradually changing public mind-set gradually evolves them into something quite different.

So I think this is now the beginning of the end. The predictions we made in our religion class in 1974 will now come to pass as we thought. We will accept suicide, then facilitate it, then it will evolve into euthanasia by a million small but apparently reasonable steps, and one day we will have Logan's Run.

Judge Dredd, here we come

The papers reported the UK's new rules on assisted suicide this morning. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6845582.ece

I will blog the issue of assisted suicide separately since it is an important futures issue in its own right. I think one of the most disturbing things here is that this hasn't been passed through the democratic process via parliament, but rolled out by the DPP. If it was unique in that respect, I wouldn't worry too much, but it isn't. Baroness Deech has just raised attention to the fact that current divorce rules didn't get decided by parliament but by the judiciary too. It was judges, not our elected representatives, who came up with the current notion that wealth should be shared equally when a marriage fails, regardless of contribution or how much each party brought to the party. It is judges who interpret the EU's human rights laws in the UK and resulted in the ridiculous imbalance we have now between the rights of culprit and victim. Other countries don't seem to have the same problem. The local interpretation of EU law for the UK should be done in parliament, preferably by reference to politicians who were part of the original process and party to the spirit of the law when it was first debated.

Important laws should be made by parliament. It is its main purpose.We elect people to represent us, and they debate amongst each other what is the best way forwards. Then, once our representatives have decided what our laws should be, the judiciary is there as part of the implementation process. It should not be the other way round. In the suicide case, poor wording made the law very unclear, and people couldn't know whether assisting in a suicide by accompanying a relative to Switzerland would result in prosecution or not. Laws should always be clear, and say precisely what was intended when the politicians have finished their debate. It is parliament's job to make sure they get the law written up correctly, but if they don't, and an ambiguity becomes clear, then it is certainly their job to clarify the intent as needed to make sure the wishes of the people are properly implemented in law. It is not the role of the judiciary to do so, and should never be. Their job is clear, to  decide whether or not people are following or breaking it.

By following the current path, we are heading towards a state where judges make the law by themselves, where we end up with the Judge Dredd scenario, where a guy with a big gun says 'I am the law'. We must not let democracy evaporate by allowing our elected representatives to neglect their jobs, letting judges do it for them so that they can make someone else take the blame. Once this process becomes too regular, politicians will allow it more and more, trying to stay in power by abdicating the tough and potentially unpopular decisions. Then the most important things in life will be decided by Judge Dredd, instead of the people we elected to do the job.

The future of suicide

Today's UK papers are full of commentary on the law on assisted suicide, after a Swiss-enabled suicide was shown last night on Sky TV.

I used to be involved in fundraising for the Samaritans, a wonderful organisation that helps people who are in despair, some of whom may be thinking of ending it all. Apparently, the worst time of the year is Christmas, when people really feel the pinch of loneliness. With current economic problems, it is likely to be even worse than usual this year. But what of the future?

The very long term (2050 and beyond) will bring technology that allows people to link their brains to the machine world, perhaps using nanotech implants connected to each synapse to relay brain activity to a high speed neural replica hosted by a computer. When this technology has matured, it will allow people to do wonderful things such as using machine sensors as extensions to their own capabilities. They will be able to use android bodies to move around and experience distant places and activities as if they were there in person.

For people who feel compelled to end it all because of disability, pain or suffering, an alternative where they could effectively upload their mind into an android might be attractive. Their quality of life would improve dramatically at least in terms of capability. We might expect that pain and suffering could be dealt with much more effectively too if we have a direct link into the brain to control the way sensations are dealt with. So we might see a big drop in the number of people who want to die.

But the technology options doesn't stop there. If a person has a highly enhanced replica of their own brain/mind, in the machine world, people will begin to ask why they need the original. The machine world could give them greater sensory abaility, graeter physical ability, and greater mental ability. Smarter, with better memory, more and better senses, connected to all the world's knowledge via the net, able effectively to wander around the world at the speed of light, and being connected directly to other people's minds when you want, and doing so without fear of ageing, ill health of pain, this would seem a very attractive lifestyle. And it will become possible this century, at low enough cost for anyone to afford.

What of suicide then? It might not seem so important to keep the original body, especially if it is worn out or defective, so even without any pain and suffering, some people might decide to dispose of their body and carry on their lives without it. Partial suicide might become possible. Aside from any religious issues, this would be a hugely significant secular ethical issue. Updating the debate today, should people be permitted to opt out of physical existence, only keeping an electronic copy of their mind, timesharing android bodies when they need to enter the physical world? Should their families and friends be able to rebuild their loved ones electronically if they die accidentally? If so, should people be able to rebuild several versions, representing the deceased's different life stages, or just the final version, which might have been ill or in decline?

And then the ethical questions get even more tricky. If it is possible to replicate the brain's structure and so capture the mind, will people start to build 'restore points', where they make a permanent record of the state of their self at a given moment? If they get older and decide they could have run their lives better, they might be able to start again from any restore point. If the person exists in cyberspace and has disposed of their physical body, what about ownership of their estate? What about working and living in cyberspace? Will people get jobs? Will they live in virtual towns like the Sims? Indeed, in the same time frame, AI will have caught up and superceded humans in ability. Maybe Sims will get bored in their virtual worlds and want to end it all by migrating to the real world. Maybe they could swap bodies with someone coming the other way?

What will the State do when it is possible to reduce costs and environmental impact by migrating people into the virtual universe? Will it then become socially and politically acceptable, even compulsary when someone reaches a given age or costs too much for health care? People thinking aboiut changing the law now should keep the long thin wedge of social attitude change in mind. It can take as little as two decades to reach a full 180 degree reversal (e.g. attitudes to gays, abortion, genetic modification). The far end of the wedge might not look so appealing.

So perhaps suicide has an interesting future. It might eventually decline, then later increase again, but in many very different forms, becoming a whole range of partial suicide options. But the scariest possibility is that people may not be able to die completely. If their body is an irrelevance, and there are many restore points from whihc they can be recovered, friends, family, or even the state might keep them 'alive' as long as they are useful. And depending on the law, they might even become a form of slave labour, their minds used for information processing or creativity whether they wish it or not. It has often truly been noted that there are worse fates than death.