Why we urgently need to change the law on assisted dying | Letters
Physicians have an important voice in the assisted dying debate, and I thank Dr. Lucy Thomas for proposing an alternative proposal for how the law should change (I see the worrying consequences of assisted dying in other countries. The UK bill needs a radical rethink, October 2). Outsourcing end-of-life choice to ‘a new, non-clinical’ service is not a new idea, indeed it was widely rejected earlier this year by politicians in the Isle of Man, who voted in favor of embedding assisted dying into their healthcare system. I too cannot accept that such a radical concept would be preferable to a safe, person-centred, proven model of assisted dying that 300 million people around the world already have access to.
My bill in the House of Lords will ensure that terminally ill, mentally competent adults are given the option of assisted dying. It sets out clear eligibility criteria and a range of practical measures to support assessment
A change in the law is urgently needed to clean up the mess that this country’s blanket ban on assisted dying has created, which protects no one in society and is unspeakably cruel to dying people, their families and those who care for them. The vast majority of British people agree that the law needs to change.
An assisted dying law will give dying people the tools to die on their own terms, safely and with compassion, and avoid being forced to suffer against their wishes, however they may define what suffering means to them. I believe it is fundamentally wrong to confuse the complex and deeply personal reasons a person might have in the last few months of their life to exercise control over the manner and timing of their impending death with thoughts of suicide. To do so is to betray your failure to understand the value of end-of-life choices. I’m not the only one with this view. Leaders in suicide prevention in Australia – where every state has legalized assisted dying since parliamentarians in this country last considered a bill – recently warned that conflating these two different issues is both inaccurate and harmful.
Parliament will soon debate assisted dying. I encourage my colleagues to vote with their conscience, but their conscience must tell them that a vote against a change in the law is in fact a vote in favor of a status quo that is demonstrably unsafe and unpopular.
Karel Valkenier
Labour, House of Lords
Regarding Lucy Thomas’s article, I was an NHS consultant in pain management. It was not unusual to meet people who, after years of ineffective treatment, were depressed, and some were actually suicidal. It was more common for patients to express their despair and fear of persistent pain in terms of suicidal ideation. Many patients had access to medications that were potentially fatal if overdosed.
Treatment was often difficult because our society has great difficulty accepting the psychological damage associated with chronic diseases. Treatment with a psychological dimension, despite the widespread ridicule, anger and skepticism regularly reported in our media and expressed in clinics, can be transformative. As a result, and as a result of my experience with serious illness as an anesthesiologist and as the son of parents who both died in hospices, I am so wary that I reject every politician’s necessarily simple prescription for euthanasia.
Dr. Tim Priester
Solihull, West Midlands
Having struggled with anxiety for most of my adult life, I’ve always been pretty bad at dealing with health issues, real or imagined. Having watched both my parents succumb to debilitating dementia, I am horrified at the prospect of heading down the same path or facing an incurable disease. I wrote instructions that I shared with my adult children. Should I be faced with a long and painful departure, it is my express wish that my boys take their father on a one-way trip to Switzerland.
Death has no horrors – it is either oblivion or the adventure of my life/death. My boys are absolutely fine with this, so God willing, the bill will pass. I am 70 and still work full time.
Colin White
Hartlepool, County Durham
I wonder what Lucy Thomas would say to my son and granddaughters, who agree that I should have access to assisted dying. We talked about my rapidly aging 87 year old body, which is now also dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. I can barely walk. My memory is failing – I barely remember faces. I used to be able to type without errors, but now I press the wrong keys over and over again. Despite my age, I continue to research and write as a historian, or at least I try. It becomes more and more difficult and very slow.
For me, and for them, the very idea of someone having to come and wash, dress or feed me is unacceptable. Just like not being able to work. So I should just be able to get help moving on to nirvana.
Marika Sherwood
Faversham, Kent
I would like to thank Lucy Thomas for her thoughtful article. As someone who suffers from multiple sclerosis, a non-terminal but potentially devastating disease, I would not want to think about the proximity of the grave if anyone, including myself, wanted to access an assisted death. It is, as Ms. Thomas writes, “intractable suffering” that should both make assisted death available to an individual and be the only standard by which their decision to die is judged. This does not create an expectation for any group that they should want or even should die based on their medical status, and does not exclude any other group from the compassionate end that assisted dying can afford.
Sophie Korevaar
Bristol
Although Lucy Thomas makes some very good points about assisted dying, she also approaches it from the point of view of a palliative care professional. Due to the underfunding of the NHS, doctors like her are often unavailable to those who need them most. The current government’s statement that further funding will only come after major reforms means these may not be common in parts of Britain for some time to come.
Disentangling the legal aspects from the medical aspects may seem sensible, but our courts, like our medical services, are stretched to their limits and may not be up to the task. It seems that what Ms. Thomas is proposing postpones the problem until we achieve a just, compassionate society that does not currently exist.
While I sympathize with her position, as someone with a terminal illness who intends to enjoy the time I have left until I become a burden to myself, I would hope that Lord Falconer would take her opinion to heart and at the same time firmly reality would remain anchored.
Mary Foster
Newport, Isle of Wight