The founding director of the Centre of Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University in Montreal and author of Death Talk: The Case Against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide delivered the keynote speech Nov. 30 at the First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide here. Her talk was titled “Death on wheels vs. the last great act of life: The battle between advocates and opponents of euthanasia.”

Somerville painted a picture of how euthanasia fits into a broad social context. She listed a variety of ideas which are attacking safeguards against legalized euthanasia. Some of these include moral relativism, utilitarianism, societal pressure, fear of mystery, intense individualism, a culture of narcissism, reason as an absolutely valid way of human knowing, equating humans to animals and machines and instrumentalism where people are treated like objects.

Among other emerging philosophies, she spent some time unpacking the threat of “transhumanism” in which advocates promote “the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities,” according to the the World Transhumanist Association.

Avoiding death is promoted as benefit of transhumanism, said Somerville.

“It tries to deal with our discomfort with mystery with a technological fix.”

Although it may seem like ideas out of a science fiction novel, various circles are starting to discuss and apply them, she said.

Approximately 4,700 people from more than 100 countries belong to the World Transhumanist Association. Somerville said the majority of these people are white males between the ages of 20 and 45 who are very computer and math literate, with some working in positions of prestige at Oxford and Harvard Universities.

Steve Mann, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto, invented the EyeTap, a wearable video camera that covers one eye, giving a recordable, real-time view of what’s going on in front of him. Mann manipulates the computer through a handheld device, though he’s experimented with putting electrodes on his skin and trying to control the cursor with brain waves.

A CNN report in 2004 said that “Mann became a cyborg so he could be more human.

“He believes that wearing computers and cameras will give people more power to maintain their privacy and individuality.”

If these ideas proliferate “we and all our most important values and beliefs will be changed beyond present recognition,” said Somerville. “Eventually we will reach the nirvana of a posthuman future: we won’t be human at all.”

Somerville said at the heart of the debate is the issue of whether humans deserve special respect.

“I believe we deserve special respect because we are human,” said Somerville. “Special respect for human beings must be predicated on nothing more than having human origins.”

Somerville said it’s the human spirit which sets humans apart from animals and machines.

“The human spirit is the means by which we can experience transcendence. People are not products to be checked out at the supermarket of life.”

In the second half of Somerville’s talk, she argued for the primacy of placing and keeping euthanasia in a moral context, rather than focusing on the law as a moral marker, in order to make the case against it.

She pointed out lessons euthanasia prevention advocates can learn from legalized abortion to avoid a similar fate.

“We lost our sense that abortion is a major moral choice. It’s gone from rare exception to the norm. The same thing will happen to euthanasia.”

She said the onset of pain is associated with people wanting to be killed.

“If pain is present it makes euthanasia more morally justified,” said Somerville. “It’s essential to make the case for the right to full pain relief.”

The case needs to be made that euthanasia is not an individual choice isolated from the broader community, but rather it affects the dying person’s family, health care workers and the disabled, said Somerville.

Somerville said that we can take lessons from L’Arche, the international movement of communities founded by Canadian Jean Vanier for people with and without disabilities. It places people with disabilities at the heart of the community as teachers, healers and sages who have intrinsic worth just for being human.

If society starts get rid of its weakest members it loses out.

“We are the losers. Receiving the gift of their presence is our gift,” said Somerville. “We need to see these dying people, as living up until their death, as a gift for the rest of us.

“Euthanasia is a rejection of death, refusal to accept any resulting gift of that person, a refusal to accept any mystery or creativity.

“Repeating mantras won’t suffice,” said Somerville, stressing the importance of stories to reveal universal truths.

Somerville left the audience with two challenges. First to personally reject euthanasia and assisted suicide, and second, to convince others this is the best choice.

“Our challenge is to maintain that death is the last great act of life.”