We must be careful with how we value life

Today is my eldest brother’s birthday. He died a few years ago, after a long illness, having told the hospital staff not to revive him when his heart, inevitably, gave out again.

I was devastated to know we would soon lose him. Though I also knew that he had made the right decision.

They say you can’t put a value on human life. But long life is not all we value. When I see virus sufferers taken off to die in hospital isolation without their relatives being able to see them or even attend their funeral, I wonder if we have our moral calculations right. Like when I see elderly patients with other health issues submerged by machines and wires and tubes and people in protective suits. Or planes made into flying intensive care wards to take Italian patients to Germany while their families remain locked down at home.

In ordinary circumstances, doctors consider the effects on families, and on the quality of future life that their interventions might achieve. But now that saving ALL lives has become the political imperative, those values, and the other values of normal daily life, have been legislated away.

That cannot be right, neither for the patients and their families, nor for the lives and welfare of the rest of the population.