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Whose Life Is It Anyway?
Brian Clark
INTRODUCTION
The title of Brian Clark’s Whose Life Is It Anyway? poses the question to the audience. During the course of the drama, the issue is examined from three perspectives: medical, philosophical, and legal. The protagonist, Ken Harrison, is a hopelessly paralyzed young sculptor who sustained his injury in a road accident. His physical condition has been stabilized, but he remains confined to the hospital with only the prospect of a long-term care facility as a change of address. Effectively removed from society by reason of his injuries, it is Ken himself who willfully determines to make the separation permanent by choosing to end his life rather than endure an existence where he has no control over his body and where his brain is kept alive with no prospect of carrying out the directives of his spirit. He believes that to continue him in such a state is to deny that which distinguishes him as a person. While there exists an argument to counter his, namely the view that locates the tragedy of disability within an unaccommodating society rather than within the disabled, for Ken a life worth living must include the capacity to express himself as a sculptor. To the social worker who argues that unimagined mechanical devices can help restore him, he questions, “How about an electronically operated hammer and chisel?” (55). In short, technology has taken over his human will, and he no longer has the ability to make free and rational choices.
In truth, Ken seeks a privilege beyond that of the right to remove or refuse life-sustaining therapy. He fights to repossess his liberty. When he makes his stand, it is on the firmest ground—the entire tradition of Western social and political philosophy that rests on individual liberty as its moral basis. In terms of clinical practice, where the autonomy of the patient is acknowledged as a value, it is a contractual relationship that characterizes the physician-patient transaction. The hero’s actions in the play are an assertion of those contractual rights viewed in terms of current philosophical arguments which hold that the dual principles of autonomy and contract keeping, conceptually linked, provide the sole moral foundation for clinical practice consistent with the social context in which the practice occurs (Smith and Newton 43–60).
In Whose Life Is It Anyway? the hero’s antagonist is Dr. Michael Emerson, the consultant physician. Dr. Emerson opposes Ken on two grounds: he maintains that his patient lacks the necessary knowledge to challenge any medical decisions; and he believes that Ken is caught in the effects of a medical syndrome—that is, his decision results from clinically depressed thinking occasioned by his massive physical injuries. Emerson argues that “a doctor cannot accept the choice for death; he’s committed to life” (91). He firmly believes that if he allows Ken to die, he will be aiding him in an act of suicide. Consequently, he assumes the moral as well as the technical agency for his patient. If his position is erroneous, it is due to his failure to recognize that the functions of an individual extend beyond the physical and the psychological. That which makes us human is our cognitional-volitional or social function, which enables us to integrate all other powers to fulfill our human destiny. Once that power is destroyed, Ken can no longer strive to fulfill his purpose in life. If a goal of medical ethics is the restoration of health, and if therapy is inadequate to restore those functions that enable us to pursue our spiritual goals, then medicine need not assume an aggressive role. Ethically, as well as legally, Ken Harrison has the right to the conscious decision he makes.
Reaching to the larger society beyond the hospital walls, Ken turns to the law to settle the dispute. The legal resolution in the play is inevitable, for the courts have little choice but to reaffirm the patient’s contractual rights. Any moral guidelines set by the medical profession or any other subculture must, of necessity, harmonize with the philosophical preconceptions of the larger society. The dramatic resolution does not solve the dilemma in medical practice that the work explores, however. The paternalistic tradition continues to dominate the physician-patient interaction. Contrary to the egalitarian spirit of the contractual relationship, inequality is intrinsic when illness renders the patient’s capacity to make rational choices open to question and shifts the balance of power to the physician who possesses both the knowledge and the obligation to restore health. Emerson affirms, “My power...
