Bad Death Or Good Death: End-of-life Care In India
Forty-two years ago, a nurse working at the King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital was thrown into a permanently vegetative state because of a sexual assault. She survived in that state for just over four decades, then died naturally. The Aruna Shanbaug case brought to light the limits of the lawas related to end-of-life care, which are really at aembryonic stage in India. Our courts did give guidelines differentiating between active and passive euthanasia, holding the latter to be legally permissible. This was challenged in the case of Common Cause versus Union of India, which held that the decision on Shanbaug was based on a wrong interpretation of the Gian Kaur case, in which a constitution bench had held that right to life did not include the right to die. What it really boils down to is this: How do we determine death? In order to legislate on end-of-life, the essential question that needs to be answered is – when can a person be considered dead? Is it when the heart stops f...