MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cicero's case rekindles debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide in Brazil

Cicero, 79, had Alzheimer's disease

The case of Brazilian poet and composer António Cicero, who died through euthanasia last week in Switzerland, has rekindled the debate in South America's largest country on whether such a practice should be legalized, Agencia Brasil reported Sunday.

“Dear friends, I find myself in Switzerland, on the verge of euthanasia. The thing is, my life has become unbearable. I'm suffering from Alzheimer's...,” wrote the 79-year-old Cicero in his posthumous letter. “I hope to have lived with dignity and I hope to die with dignity,” he also noted Wednesday before carrying on with the procedure in a country where assisted suicide is permitted.

His case rekindled the debate on euthanasia, assisted suicide, and the dignity of death for people who could not afford a trip abroad to end their lives.

Veterinary student Carolina Arruda, 27, from the town of Bambuí (MG), has suffered since she was 16 from trigeminal neuralgia, a disease that affects the nerves in the face and causes intense pain, described by health professionals as so strong that it is impossible to ignore. Even in a painful and complex scenario, she campaigned for funds to carry out assisted suicide in Switzerland. Living with this “unbearable pain”, Carolina estimates that she would need more than R$ 200,000 (around US$ 35,000) to make the procedure possible.

“My dream is still to see my daughter graduate. She's still 10 years old. That's why she doesn't know if it will be possible. My life routine today is practically all day in bed because if I make any physical effort, I pass out from the pain.”

She explains that it was very difficult to think of a procedure that would end her life. “I still haven't had the courage to say it. My family doesn't accept it, but they understand. It was friends and family who saw the days turn into experiences of excruciating pain for Carolina. She knows that the required documentation will take a long time to be accepted in Switzerland. ”More than four years. I know that in Brazil this issue isn't even discussed and won't be anytime soon. There's a blindfold over it,“ she added.

Aline Albuquerque, a legal researcher and bioethics professor at UnB, pointed out that both euthanasia and assisted suicide were still crimes under the Brazilian Penal Code. ”We do not have any legislative modification in this sense in Brazil. It is a complex issue not only in Brazil. There is currently a draft of a new Penal Code, which is in the Senate, in relation to euthanasia with the possibility of the judge not applying the penalty.”

Scholars believe, however, that the growth in the number of elderly people (people over 65 represent 10.9% of the population) and the evolution of technologies that keep people alive in irreversible situations should make discussions on the subject more recurrent.

“Dysthanasia, for example, is the artificial prolongation of life without necessity. It's a life that will have a lot of pain. Assisted suicide is a form of suicide that has been discussed and implemented in European countries such as The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland,” the expert said.

Professor Maria Júlia Kovács argued that “Europeans are more advanced and so is North America. Whether in the United States, with assisted suicide, or in Canada, with assisted death. Here in Latin America, Colombia, Uruguay, and Chile are discussing the issue.” She added that “the first step Brazil should take is to discuss the issue.”

“Another possibility for a dignified death in our country are advance directives in which the person expresses the treatments they would like at the end of their life and especially those they would not like,” she elaborated.

”People can talk about decriminalizing (the practice of euthanasia), but it should be noted that it would be necessary, for example, to structure the public health system for this,“ she went on while downplaying fears that if euthanasia were to be approved, it would be possible to be carried out at home. ”That doesn't exist. They have to be assisted by healthcare professionals.“

Albuquerque insisted that death is a taboo issue for Brazil's plural society honoring the sacredness of life and holding it also within the realm of the individual's autonomy. ”It's very difficult for the state to take a position in the face of such a complex moral disagreement.”