‘We need more compassion’: British families call for assisted dying reforms
aAccording to his son, for the decade after Norman Ward was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the age of 60, “you wouldn’t have known he was unwell”. But eventually the cancer spread “everywhere.” Then he had a stroke.
“It all went wrong,” Gareth Ward said of his father. “He was very independent. As long as he could go to the pub and walk his dog, he was happy. But he was in a lot of pain for a long time. He became thinner and weaker and had to constantly take morphine. He looked like he was already dead, and no one had told him.”
One day Norman called his son and said he couldn’t have another night like the one that just passed. “He was very matter-of-fact and said he was going to shoot himself, then hung up. He knew exactly what he said and did.”
Ward’s stomach dropped: his father had locked a licensed shotgun in the attic of his house. He called 999 and also his sisters, who lived near Norman. One sister reached the house before police and found her father’s body in a lawn chair. He was 75.
“People shouldn’t do what my father did. But he was in a world of hurt and it was only going to get worse. My father decided to take himself down,” he said.
Since his father’s death, Ward has joined the campaign to make assisted dying possible for people with terminal illnesses. “We need more compassion,” he said.
This week, MPs published a report on what they described as this “difficult, sensitive and yet crucial subject”. It came amid growing calls for a change in the law, driven in part by celebrity interventions from Dame Diana Rigg, Dame Harriet Walter and Dame Esther Rantzen, who have described the current assisted dying law as a “mess”.
More than 130,000 people signed a petition calling for a parliamentary debate and vote on assisted dying. Labor leader Keir Starmer, who could be prime minister by the end of this year, has backed a call for a change in the law. Campaigners point to overwhelming public support and say the mood among MPs has changed significantly since the last vote in 2015.
The MPs’ report contained evidence on assisted dying, reflecting arguments both for and against. The intention was to provide a useful tool for the debate on this topic.
Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, which represents more than 40 organizations opposed to assisted dying, said he was disappointed that MPs had not “spoke out decisively” against changing the law.
“MPs could have decided to firmly close the door on assisted suicide and euthanasia,” he said, “and say that the current law, which protects everyone, regardless of whether they are young or old, healthy or disabled, should remain. They failed.”
From the other side of the debate, Sarah Wootton, CEO of Dignity in Dying, said the report “moves the prospect of an assisted dying law in Britain from a hypothetical to a reality. She recognizes that legislative changes are underway in the British Isles and rightly calls on the Government to participate in this debate.
“If MPs can only take one thing from the mountains of evidence revealed in this inquiry, it is that the current assisted dying law is unsafe and woefully inadequate. Palliative care is simply not enough to give everyone a peaceful death, forcing terminally ill Britons to consider suicide or seek compassion in Switzerland.”
The report points out that the proportion of the UK population aged over 65, and therefore more likely to suffer from terminal illness, is rising sharply. According to government statistics, there will be another 7.5 million people over 65 within fifty years.
Although Britain was a “world leader” in palliative and end-of-life care, provision is patchy, according to the report. Dr. Paul Perkins, chief medical officer of the Sue Ryder charity, told MPs’ inquiry: “I am constantly amazed that as a society it is okay that we have to sell second-hand vests to care for seriously ill people. . If people thought you had to sell second-hand vests for their cancer surgery, I don’t find that acceptable.”
But even excellent palliative care was not enough in some cases. One person told the study that their wife’s cancer ‘proved resistant to all treatment options, including quite heroic neurosurgery… Her treatment, including specialist palliative care, had been excellent throughout, but she had simply had enough. And she actually said to me, ‘They treat cats and dogs better than people.’ And it wasn’t that she was in pain. She felt terrible all the time and she knew this was only going one way.”
Dr. Stephen Duckworth told the inquiry that as a severely disabled person he was strongly opposed to assisted dying until he was on the bench Commission on Assisted Dying, which reported in 2012. “The evidence that emerged from this committee has caused me to change my mind,” he said.
He added: “A terminally ill person who requests assistance in dying is not choosing between living and dying. They choose between two different ways to die; either suffer avoidable suffering or a peaceful death surrounded by family and friends celebrating life.”
Pippa Stone lived for 18 days after her brain tumor was diagnosed at age 60, but those days will “haunt me for the rest of my life,” said her daughter, Josie Kemp. “She deteriorated much faster than we expected. It was so undignified, not the end of life anyone would want.
“She cried and told us she just wanted to die. She wore diapers, she lost her speech, she lost the ability to swallow. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. She was on the maximum medication she could take. It was a very traumatic experience for everyone,” she added.
Her mother “certainly would have wanted an assisted death if it was available. Her life could have ended while she still had her speech and dignity.” Kemp is now campaigning for a change to the assisted dying law. “Everyone is one gruesome death away from wanting this to happen,” she said.