On medically assisted suicide

The medically assisted suicide of Lucio Magri has opened, in fact, a debate in the country. Masked under appeals to silence, pietas, respect for a personal decision, exponents of culture and politics have not failed to express their judgment by advancing a political interpretation of a gesture of human desperation which, as far as it can be understood, can neither be shared nor accepted. Suicide is always a failure: of politics, of culture, of society, of assistance, perhaps even - and this is the hardest thing to admit - of friendship and affections. And it must be treated as a failure. Not as a battle of civilization.

The fact that Magri's life was consumed in a "death clinic" in Switzerland highlights the radical upheaval that the art of medicine undergoes when it lends itself to endorsing a non-existent right to die: death can never be considered a good to be protected or guaranteed and certainly cannot be considered a "drug" that can be administered by a doctor, whose task should be summed up in the care of the sick.

It should be regretted that many mass media have linked Magri's choice with depression, defined as an incurable disease, forgetting what is actually being done to treat people suffering from this serious pathological condition that certainly does not deserve to be stigmatized as a prelude to suicide. 

In a period of economic and social crisis, we need everything except a message that radicalizes the extreme gesture of loneliness and desperation of a man as a model from which to draw political lessons.