Re: Covid-19: Second judge says that most complex covid patient in the world should be allowed to die – The BMJ

Dear Editor,

This poor lady's case illustrates the dilemma of what constitutes ordinary and extraordinary care. This is a crucial debate considering the push for euthanasia, assisted suicide, etc, in some quarters. Medical care is not about flogging dead horses, it is not about over zealous intervention or the mindset of keeping a body alive at all costs. It is also not about bumping off tired folk, people with considered loss of autonomy or unbearable suffering.

It should be about a caring palliation of the final moments and days in a person's life. About a dedicated approach to bio-psycho-social and spiritual care. Prolonging the dying process or enforcing arduous treatments in patients with a terminal prognosis is over-medicalisation and unhelpful.

The world pattern is for people to die at home without interventions, simply because they don't exist and families do their best. In the developed world medicine has tools to keep people alive and hopefully bring a cure. Their overuse causes problems for hospitals and families and the patients. Sometimes it is best to "call it a day" and allow life to happen and for people to be allowed to die. It is a natural process. I am aware that pressures may be brought to bear to follow a different route to that guided by wisdom and medical expertise and so be it. People and families are entitled to make choices provided the choice is available, does not exclude another more deserving patient from more benefit, and is affordable. We absolutely do not need assisted suicide or euthanasia but what is needed is a reasonable and balanced attitude to death and what is and what is not in keeping with the dignity of life and the person in its management. We should become more expert in preventing overzealous interventions when foreseeable.

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Re: Covid-19: Second judge says that most complex covid patient in the world should be allowed to die - The BMJ