The bounds of compassion? Medical ethics and the politics of medical mercy killings in South Africa, 1930s to 1976

Abstract

The 1975 trial of Dr Alby Hartman for the killing of his father, in September the previous year at the small hospital at Ceres just over 100 kms from Cape Town, galvanised South African debates about medical euthanasia. After the trial, the obligations and duties of doctors faced with extreme suffering, profound disability, or inevitable death were widely discussed. The first study of medical mercy killings in South Africa, this article provides context, from the 1930s to the 1970s, for the Hartman trial and its controversial sentence. I consider why Dr Hartman admitted to ending his father's life, but also entered the plea of not guilty to murder. ‘Compassion was my motive’, he said. Several complexities of compassion and medical ethics in South Africa before 1976 are explored through attention to the role of Dr Guy A. Elliott. Through attention to South African medical politics under apartheid, I explain the contradictory positions on censuring Dr Hartman taken in 1976 by the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC). Finally, I point to how the sentence passed on Dr Hartman – which made him a criminal ‘non-law’- has had a complex legacy for the issue of doctor-assisted dying in South Africa.