By Dr. James Bachman
Final Exit, a book of recipes for suicide, should have been titled Dead End, Nonetheless, this ill-conceived work is a best-seller, with sales exceeding 500,000 in the United States alone.Perhaps those who have bought this book thought that author Derek Humphry could help them ponder the profoundly disturbing temptation to commit suicide in the face of severe or ternninal illness. But Humpbry lacks both the insight and the compassion needetl for a careful study of the temptation to self-destruct.Humphry first encountered the temptation of suicide for the tenninally ill in 1975, when his wife, Jean, was losing her battle with breasteancer. InJean'sWay (1978) Humphry recounts her illness and suicide. The book shows a rootless man's panic and flight in the face of his wife's misfortune. He reports that he could barely stand to be confined in the carwith his wife as she struggled with her illness. "The horror of it all began to hit me in such a way that parts of me started to go out of control" page 41).Humphry fled to an affair with an old acquaintance because he "was riddled with anxiety and doubt over whether I could ever be attractive to another female" (74). The affair "did wonders for my ego, and I no longer felt condemned to a life of utter desolation and solitude" (80).Humphry was tempted to kill Jean in her sleep without even consulting her. "I debated whether I should slip the overdose to Jean that night..but I realized that I could not administer it without her knowing" (104). In the end, she drank the poison he gave heron the Saturuay before Easter in 1975Jean's Way should more appropriately be called Humphry's Way. Humphry's way is a path not of thoughtful reflection on the suffering of the terminally ill, but a way of selfish preparation of a final exit for himself from the challenge of caring for his wife.Humphry's way reasserted itself in his second wife's suicide in October1991. In 1989 Ann Humphry learned that she, like Jean before her, had breast cancer. Within a month of learning that Ann had cancer, Humphry left a message on their phone answering machine saying he was filing for divorce. Even though Ann's cancer was being successfully treated, her despair over Humphry's abandonment brought her to suicide at age 49Today, Humphry offers Final Exit to entice many more people to follow his bankrupt way. In none of his books has Humphry, a journalist, ever engaged in careful reflection on the temptations and possibilities facing the terminally ill. Instead, he mostly tells stories about people who have committed suicide; he assumes that somehow their actions demonstrate suicide to be a worthy choice. Incredibly, though consistently, he tells several stories about women who, though healthy, committed suicide along with their ailing husbands. Evidently, he thinks it especially wonderful that women would commit suicide for or with their mates.Humphry realizes that pain isn't the issue. For the most part, physical pain can be properly managed (126). What especially bothers him are those aspects of dying that force a person "even more into the intimate care of others." He says that "dependence on others degrades" a person and creates "unbearable suffering" that can justify suicide (127).We who are Christians know that we 'are always dependent, on one another in the church, which in turn depends on God. Intimate care, given and received. is for us not a degradation but an opportunity to be "little Christs" for one another. God often calls us to be care givers, but lie also at times calls each of us to be care receivers. When we are seriously or terminally ill, we ought not reject God's call to be one of Christ's sisters or brothers providing opportunities for others to sene God in caring for us.
Derek Humphry, an avowed atheist, is fleeing from God. In fleeing from God' we flee from each other too. So Humphry has fled from those who needed his care. He is a troubled, lost man, neither thoughtful nor compassionate. He has irresponsibly put lethal information into the hands of troubled people. Christians owe to our society a readiness to witness against the hopeless message of this book and the man who wrote it – and to witness for our Lord, who died and rose so that we may have abundant life.
Final Exit offers no exit – only a dead end.
Dr James Bachman is Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts at Valparaiso University. His article is reprinted with permission from the Lutheran Witness, May 1992.