PUT THE PATIENT FIRST

Draft guidelines on passive euthanasia exclude the interests of terminally ill patients: A letter to the Union health minister

- PINKI VIRANI

GREETINGS Union Health Minister J P Nadda, We seem destined, your ministry and I, to be working in conjunction for more than a decade now for the benefit of Indians in matters of health. Credit to the government, especially to the bureaucrats in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, for bringing about farreaching changes—be it by banning commercial surrogacy; by stopping young women’s bodies from being hyper-stimulated with chemical steroids to be medically mined for oocytes/eggs that are being sold in the national and international markets; or by regulating exploitative ivf (in vitro fertilisation) and controlling 3pr (third-party reproduction) in ivf where sperm was being commercially sold and even switched—without the knowledge of the intending parents—to “improve” the average 75 per cent failure rate in artificial human reproduction.

Post the landmark passive euthanasia judgement-law in 2011, laid down by the two Supreme Court judges in the case of Aruna Ramchandra Shanbaug