And another thing…

No, on balance, appears to be the better answer. The issue defies certainty on either side. Many of us – me included – have experience of the lingering death of someone very close to us, someone who may have had enough and who just wants to leave and leave now but now lacks the strength to make it happen for themselves. We can’t be allowed to help them hasten their end. There are too many shades of motivation, on the part of the dying and on the part of family and friends, which might influence what happens. There’s too much scope for wrong decisions to be made, even if malevolent motives aren’t involved in any way. We are human, we know it will end. That’s both a curse, and a gift.

Tom, this is issue that I changed my mind on a few years ago. I used, like you, to be opposed to it. However when my Mum (who has since died) was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease it made me think about it again. Initialy I was still opposed, but the more time I spent researching it, the more convinced I became that I was wrong. I now support Patricia’s move.

With respect, disagree vehemently.

Do you think the relatives who help their loved ones’ carry out their wishes (going to Dignitas in Switzerland or wherever) should be prosecuted?

If you do not then you should surely agree with Hewitt’s very sensible proposal to revist the law here.

It makes a joke of our legal system to have a law in place that noone wants to see enforced.

So are you going to be consistent and demand that people such as Daniel James’ parents should be charged?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/7677706.stm

You talk about being worried about taking the “wrong path” but it seems to me you’re trying to avoid taking any path at all!

I don’t usually adopt libertarian positions, but I sincerely believe that human beings should have the freedom to choose to end their own lives.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me there but it is clear that the law as it stands is problematic and needs to be looked at again.

Like Jim Baxter, I have also experienced the lingering death of loved ones (my father and three grandparents), however, Tom, I am certain you are right to vote ‘no’. The slippery slope leads to the unthinkable. And don’t be ‘afraid’!

Tom, how can you criminalise people for doing something perfectly legal in the territory they are in?

Do you plan to place UK citizens in jail of they smoke pot in Amsterdam? How about firing guns in the US?

Should Saudi citizens be arrested on their return for drinking alcohol in the UK? Should Irish women be arrested for coming to the UK to have an abortion?

I feel your views on this are well intentioned but misguided. Hopefully I will never be arrested for doing something legal in a foreign country.

I agree with Tom. I was dismayed to hear Baroness Warnock a few months ago express the view that those who have no quality of life and who can’t be expected to improve (she was specifically referring to alzheimers sufferers) should be allowed to do the socially responsible thing and request to die. I was appalled, not least of all because Mary Warnock, despite being a respected philosopher (and an influential figure in political circles), had revised her opinion on the grounds of her experience of coping with her father’s alzheimers. We don’t, and shouldn’t, arrrive at ethical positions on the basis of emotion.

This is exactly why MPs should have blogs to give a well thought out argument for why they will vote a certain way.

I happen to disagree with you and instead would think of the analogy not of a slippery slope but the first step on a steady and well controlled escalator.

I have Multiple Sclerosis and may, many years from now, need help to end my own life. How can we have a situation where it is legal to commit suicide but to do so, you have to be able bodied? This inherently discriminates against the disabled because they may lack the physical capacity to carry out the physical act of suicide.

Aside from that, the straw men about ’slipper slope’ and ‘coercion’ can be addressed very easily. Before you go to for an assisted suicide, you have to apply to a court – let them look at it. Its not like there’ll be so many we swamp the legal system. My bet is that miscarriages of justice would err on the side of refusing applications…

The day that I get the bad news is the day I fly to Switzerland.

Some people suppose that de-criminalising this procedure will subject those with illnesses to the attentions of malign relatives. This can be addressed in advance by the application of a “living will”, whereby you make your wishes known in advance of a calamity.

At present, we have the scandal of law abiding citizens, who have lost a loved one, being subjected to the law like a common criminal.

Have a heart.

Hmmm. This is a big tough moral question that reminds me why being an MP isn’t all lunches at The Ivy and second homes. I have many problems with this the least of which is why the courts can insist on doctors ending treatment against the wishes of the family i.e. Baby OT, insist on doctors desisting treatment to comply with the wishes of the family but not on insisting that treatment to end a life be taken. I have trouble seeing the difference between a court ordering a doctor to stop feeding an individual (ending treatment) and ordering a doctor to stop feeding an individual (euthanasia).

Likewise we have to be aware that doctors are not always acting in the individual patients’ best interest: Dr Michael Wilks, of the British Medical Association’s ethics committee, said every time we give unnecessary treatment we spend NHS resources and deprive someone else of these resources. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3722776.stm

The law in this area needs a clean up big time, not just tinkering with not prosecuting people who commit legal acts abroad. The science has moved on leaving our lawmakers high and dry and with judges and doctors making it up as they go along with no clear ethical guidance.

It certainly isn’t for a lack of political courage that you oppose a change in the law – nevertheless your reasoning is wrong.

Concerns about a slippery slope, although understandable, are not valid. It is possible to draft a safeguarded law, which protects the vulnerable whilst promoting choice for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in unbearable suffering. Oregon in the US has shown this to be the case.

At present the law does not define who or who shouldn’t travel abroad to die, so are we not already on a slippery slope? Patricia Hewitt’s amendment simply reflects the current practice of the law. If you are unhappy with the amendment then surely you must be unhappy with the current mess we are in. In which case, it’s time to talk about safeguards!

I think you’re missing the salient point here Tom.

The issue before you is whether the act of transporting a person from this country to another for the purpose of them legally ending their life in that country, amounts to “assisted suicide”, and therefore falls foul of the criminal law in this country.

According to any objective analysis, of course it bloody shouldn’t!

What if I provide the funds for a friend to travel to Amsterdam for the sole purpose of engaging in recreational cannabis use? Am I then a drug dealer?

I blame the press myself for totally misrepresenting the issue. The whole thing has absolutely NOTHING to do with assisted suicide. It’s all to do with whether transporting a person to a foreign country to engage in something illegal in this country amounts to an offence.

So, it boils down to what you really think Tom. If my mother wants to go abroad to end her life prematurely, do you really think I should be arrested and imprisoned for driving her to the airport and accompanying her?

@James

‘It is possible to draft a safeguarded law, which protects the vulnerable whilst promoting choice for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in unbearable suffering. Oregon in the US has shown this to be the case’.

A summary of the Oregon safeguards can be found here, Section B:

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/reports/04Death/Death_With_Dignity_Report.htm

I see no safeguard there, to take just one example, for the person whose lifelong instinct to fight to the last may be overridden by observing the effects their illness has on others, from their distress all the way down to the inconvenience for them of all those hospital visits, however willingly they are made.

I have no doubt that my grandfather was ‘put down’, by the family doctor, like a sick dog. He was terminally ill and died very promptly after a final shot of morphine. That was over forty years ago. Everybody knew what had happened and all were grateful to the doctor. My grandfather, old soldier that he was, would, I’m sure, have felt the same way.

But it was still wrong. You don’t do that to people. I don’t call that dignified.

The only watertight safeguard is proscription.

I’m opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia because I know of too many elderly people, with substantial capital from the sale of their homes, living in misery in the cheapest old peoples’ homes that their money grabbing nephews or other family could find.

Many Dutch pensioners have been found to live in fear since euthanasia was legalised in Holland. My guess is that they are as afraid of their nearest and dearest bumping them off for their money as they are of the medical profession doing the same to free up beds.

My Mother died in September 2004, she was 85. She was very positive, and for several months, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, she gratefully ‘finished’ her life, preparing to die.

Six weeks before she ‘went home’, she reached that point where a person often feels that their work is done, and was ready to leave. During these six weeks, my Father willingly (thank goodness he was able) took the stress of nursing her at home, then spending the final week at her bedside in a Hospice. I, my two brothers, sister and other friends and family visited her. Unfortunately, we were not all present as she took her final breath and left us.

That Christmas, an older relative’s dog had reached old age and was also ready to die. I took her and her dog to the vet, we said our goodbyes, and Paddy was given an injection and died peacefully.

I remember thinking how much nicer it would have been for my Mother to have been able to arrange for all her family and friends to be with her six weeks before she went, we could all have been there, said our goodbyes, and she could have left peacefully, when she was ready.

Well that’s another issue that I agree with Tom.

@James
A safegaurd law?
How’s that going to work, who decides if someone has been pressured or not?

The reason their seems to be a mess is that a blind eye has been turned to the law.

The right to kill yourself isn’t a problem, it is the right of others to kill you (or assist) that is problematic.
Just apply a bit of psychological pressure to dear old granny; how she is a burden on everyone etc.. Especially when she is in pain.

You think it won’t happen? Then you’re naive.

@ Chris’ Wills

“The right to kill yourself isn’t a problem, it is the right of others to kill you (or assist) that is problematic.”

What about people too disabled to take their own lives? People unable to get to a cliff or to undo a pill cap, the paralysed, for example? THEY are the people who NEED assistance to end their own lives.

In other fields we strive to put the disabled on, to pardon the pun, on an equal footing with the able bodied. If that extends to parking and employment rights, to access to services and buildings, why does it not extend to the *right* to end you own life?

1 a foetus is killed in the womb prior to abortion less it be born alive when every effort would be made to save it because failure to do so could result in prosecution.
2 baby ot’s case was considered by the courts and he/she was allowed to die by withdrawal of medical support against the wishes of the parents
3 elderly patients can opt for tlc only i.e. no medical intervention but some doctors will insist on treatment to continue life even though the patient is beyond help fearing being disciplined for failure to do all possible
4 doctors can administer pain killers that will shorten life as long as the intention is to alieviate pain
5 patients can go abroad for euthanasia and anyone helping them could be prosecuted although this now seems unlikely.

as james says the whole thing is a mess and i suggest the whole thing needs to be considered in its totality rather than bit here, bits there.

The fears expressed by Jim Baxter and Chris’ Wills are just that fears. Evidence from Oregon has shown no threat to vulnerable people. In fact a clear law on this issue does more to protect all of us – the rate of legal assisted deaths in Oregon is 4 times lower than the number of illegal assisted deaths in other US States.

If somebody wants their life prolonged, that should be adhered to. On the other side of the coin, if somebody is dying, and they want to bring an end to their suffering they should be allowed to with medical assistance (and choice should apply to health professionals as to whether they assist).

Somebody should only be able to have an assisted death if they are terminally ill, mentally competent and they make persistent requests. All of which can be included as safeguards. Ultimately, this should be a decision for the person themselves, not their family, doctor, Church, Government or you.

Vulnerable people are exposed now, what safeguards are there to prevent people from going abroad (bar cost) or from committing suicide (which often goes wrong and causes more distress)? Opponents of change always assert that vulnerable people would be at threat from a change in the law, but never engage with the evidence that they currently are exposed and in fact would be better protected by a more regulated and compassionate approach to end-of-life decision making.

On an issue of conscience like this, I do not think we should impose our views on other people (which is why it is a choice), why do anti-choice opponents want to impose their view on the majority who don’t agree with them?

Would Hewittas be a good name for these new outlets of death?

@James,

‘Evidence from Oregon has shown no threat to vulnerable people’.

Oh? And what is the nature of this evidence? How was it gathered, and from whom? What steps were taken to assess the context and the expectations or pressures within it which may have affected the evidence?

Just saying that there is ‘evidence’ is rarely good enough when dealing with such complex issues.

I have no desire to impose my views on anyone although I can think of matters in which I am glad that the view of the minority prevails.

This is only a discussion, and is intended only to test some views.

@ Shaun Pilkington

In other fields we strive to put the disabled on, to pardon the pun, on an equal footing with the able bodied. If that extends to parking and employment rights, to access to services and buildings, why does it not extend to the *right* to end you own life?

Because they aren’t ending their own life someone else is.

They can refuse treatment if they wish, but this is a very slippery slope

@James

The fears expressed by Jim Baxter and Chris’ Wills are just that fears. Evidence from Oregon has shown no threat to vulnerable people. In fact a clear law on this issue does more to protect all of us

So what are the measurement criteria, who confirms that the person hasn’t been pressured. Who signs off that they aren’t clinically or psychologically depressed. etc etc

How many assisted suicides occurred prior to the law being passed? Comparisons to other states aren’t relevant as that figure may have always been 4 times that of Oregon.

@James
….Vulnerable people are exposed now, what safeguards are there to prevent people from going abroad (bar cost) or from committing suicide (which often goes wrong and causes more distress)?…

So your arguement is; because people can break the law in foreign lands and are at risk from unscrupulous people already, we should make it simpler for the unscrupulous in the UK.

Very strange

With respect Tom you are wrong on this. I can understand your concern but the current situation is completely untenable and unfair.

If I kept a cat or dog well past the time it should have been put down then I would be being cruel to that animal. I would imagine in this day and age I could even be prosecuted for such action.

We _are_ animals. Why should a human be treated worse than an animal?

Obviously there need to be safeguards.

@ Chris Wills

So basically you believe that the right to commit suicide is *rightly* tied to the physical capacity to carry out the act? Why?

Chris’ Wills

For evidence:

http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/assisted-dying-is-happening-despite-the-law-against-it.html

However, my hunch is that whatever evidence you are presented with you will dismiss it. This could be for two reasons (or perhaps both):

You are religious, and you believe that your interpretation of your religion prevents you from supporting assisted dying for the terminally ill. If this is the case, I have little more to say other than I respect your beliefs, but ask that you do not impose them on people who do not share them

And/or

You take the starkest view of human nature and believe that it is beyond the wit of man to devise laws which promote choice whilst protecting the vulnerable. If this is the case I would ask that you take a deep breath and accept the fact that pretty much all legislation by democratic Governments, whether it be on driving or what we eat and drink, is based on accepting that it is their job to balance these two concepts. If you reject this, that way lies minority rule or anarchy.

You are assisting a loved one taking a trip abroad. The purpose of that trip is not the government’s concern.

This is not about assisted suicide or euthanasia, it is about the right to take an adult abroad who, for whatever reason, cannot make the journey alone!

@james

Many thanks for taking the trouble to post link to your sources, even though only abstracts are shown. I’ve now read them. Condiser these two only, which appear most pertinent to this discussion:

1) Those who considered physician-assisted-suicide also were reported to experience a higher number of symptoms, with pain and sadness most strongly associated with PAS consideration. However, pain has not been commonly reported in those who move beyond consideration to ultimately take a lethal prescription. Physician reports about the 171 Oregonians who used PAS cited concerns about autonomy far more frequently than pain as motivation for the patient’s decision, indicating that those who follow through with PAS may have different motives from those who merely consider PAS.

Tolle SW, Tilden VP, Drach LL, Fromme EK, Perrin NA, Hedberg K, ‘Characteristics and Proportion of Dying Oregonians Who Personally Consider Physician-Assisted Suicide’, JME 2004, 15(2), 111-118.

and

2) The most commonly cited reasons for considering PAS were:
a) Feeling weak, tired, and uncomfortable
b) Pain and/or unacceptable side effects of pain medications
c) Loss of function (two thirds of participants)
d) Loss of sense of self (two thirds of participants): people were concerned about how dying was eroding their sense of self. Patients expressed concern about losing their personality, ’source of identity’, or ‘essence’. Without the ability to maintain aspects of their life that defined them as individuals, life lost its meaning and personal dignity was jeopardized.
e) Desire for control: in 21 cases, the patient?s desire for a hastened death was linked to a long-standing sense of independence and desire to maintain control over future events.
f) Fears about future quality of life and dying
Pearlman RA, Hsu C et al., ‘Motivations for Physician-assisted Suicide – Patient and Family Voices’, JGIM 2005, 234-239.

I can see nothing there which reassures us that the patients discussing this option with their doctors have not been talked into this way of thinking, whether or not they proceed to excercise the option, and it appears that only a minority who discuss it go on to do it.

You say that Chris’ Wills must either religious or very cynical if he persists with his doubts in the face of such evidence. Nice ad hominem turn to your case there.

There’s another explanation. Perhaps he simply knows more about human nature than you do. Perhaps I do too.

Interesting quotes there, Jim.

For me, with my MS, I’m looking squarely at 2c and to a lesser extent, 2d. That’s what paralysis would mean, with our present state of medical technologies.

Nobody is pressuring me. No doctor is telling me that under those circumstances, I should kill myself. Nor would one; today’s reports show that support for assisted death is lower among doctors than in the wider population. I just know that I won’t want to live like that, unable to interact with the world, destined to destitution.

The fact that assisted suicide is off the menu largely because of other people’s fears about straw men or their religious beliefs, puts me in the same situation as Debbie Purdy: Either I have to kill myself early, while I still have the physical capacity to do so (or to travel to Switzerland or whatever), or run the risk of getting other people prosecuted for assisting a suicide, should I go to Switzerland, living on in indefinite torment if I can’t.

Thanks for that. Nice one. Hope you moralisers feel proud of yourselves for putting me, and many people like me, in that position.

@Shaun Pilkington

There’s no moralising about it. It’s about protecting the vulnerable.

‘Hope you moralisers feel proud of yourselves for putting me, and many people like me, in that position’.

Nobody has put you in that position, suddenly. The present position has been the position in law for quite a long time.

@Jim Baxter

“‘Hope you moralisers feel proud of yourselves for putting me, and many people like me, in that position’.

Nobody has put you in that position, suddenly. The present position has been the position in law for quite a long time.”

While that is undoubtedly true, the belief of you and people like you, people in the 20% minority who oppose assisted suicide

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/opinion/death_by_nonsense.shtml

, people over-represented by Parliamentarians beholden to minority religions, ensure that the position which predates my birth would also condemn me to a hellish period of life for what? For getting ill?

How humanitarian!

@Shaun Pilkington

I don’t know if you’ve read all of my posts on this thread. My view is that there are powerful arguments on both sides, honestly held. Perhaps you could concede the same.

Sorry Jim, I can’t concede that.

The argument of the anti-assistance mob are quite happy to definitely (no straw men here) keep the disabled from getting help to kill themselves. Where this is religiously motivated, I give it nothing. I am an atheist and other people’s beliefs in supernatural sky-men should not be used to rule my life, especially when it is to condemn me to a living hell of pain and paralysis.

@Shaun Pilkington

There will be those, as you say, who think of this as a religious or moral issue. I don’t happen to be one of them. My concerns, as I say, are for the vulnerable. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand or respect the views of those who disagree. I don’t think that anyone should have to stay alive who no longer wishes to be alive. I do think though that suicide has to be their choice and their action, and theirs alone.

I don’t believe in redemption through suffering, I believe in morphine. Who knows which of us may next be struck by terrible illnesses. I don’t wish pain or indignity on anybody but pain and indignity may be something that many of us will have to endure to protect the vulnerable. I saw slow death happen to many in my family. I saw it happen to my father, and I loved my father. If it’s in my family to die slow deaths it will probably happen to me. I still don’t think the law should be changed.

Sorry Jim,

It’s this

“suicide has to be their choice and their action, and theirs alone.”

specifically, which discriminates against people who don’t have able bodies. Why do you want the disabled to have to suffer where the able need not?

@Shaun Pilkington

‘Why do you want the disabled to have to suffer where the able need not?’

I don’t ‘want’ anybody to suffer.

Okay Jim, but you are content for people who are physically unable to, say, travel to Switzerland or get a cap off a pill bottle to suffer. Or, better, to die early, committing suicide while they have the physical capacity to do so rather than risk having a loved one prosecuted for ‘assistance’, which the DPP refuses to define. If we all killed ourselves early, everyone else could get their heads back in the sand, right? Or worship their gods. Whatever.

I can’t draw the distinction you do between ‘not wanting’ people to suffer but simultaneously refusing the disabled the rights available to the able bodied to end that suffering. So, to my eyes, your desire for the status quo is equivalent to condemning the disabled to suffer. And for what? For notional ‘vulnerable’ straw men?

To people who make that argument, I say: show me one. Show me a person badgered into an assisted death. Anywhere.

And if you can, do you really think we couldn’t set up a legal screening system making use of the courts to grant approval for such a suicide?

‘To people who make that argument, I say: show me one. Show me a person badgered into an assisted death. Anywhere.’

How would you be able to tell? And, people may badger themselves out of consideration for others.

Some illnesses rob us of our capacity to act, including our ability to act to end them, Some don’t. It’s not fair, I quite agree.

Jim, if you agree that its not fair consider this:

We have laws in place to provide for equality of opporunity for the disabled. We provide carers if they need it, legislate for wheelchair access and generally try to ensure that the disabled have the same rights as the able bodied. There is no justification for saying that the disabled are equal to the able bodied BUT we won’t help them end their own lives.

That is an artificial, and I’d argue values-based, distinction. And since I don’t believe in gods or monsters, I don’t share those values and can therefore see this injustice for what it is.

Equality must be universal, not just across the bits someone else feels to be appropriate.

What about people with acute, chronic, depression? They would presumambly be excluded from an assisted dying programme on the grounds that they are ‘not of sound mind’. Yet they are in great pain which is no less real for being in their minds than the pain caused by more tangible organic diseases.

What about people with dementia? Also excluded. You may leave a living will to say that your life is not to be artifically prolonged by medical intervention but not one to say that active steps should be taken by others to end your life in the event that you become of unsound mind.

Discrimination? Yes. We are all discrimated against in one way or the other, in life or death ways such as we are discussing here, and in less serious ways which may nonetheless be of great significance to the individual, e.g. on the basis of how good looking we are. We cannot eradicate all discrimation but can only do our best to minimise it, attempting to reach a balance of rights for everybody.

But Jim, in your drive to achieve a ‘balance of rights for everybody’ you must choose between suicide being a right for all, a right for none or, as at the moment, the right for a privileged few.

Sound mind is a requirement, and should always be a requirement, for life and death decision making.

All suicide schemes in the world check and exclude those who are depressed. Dementia is an odd one as it seems to be so much worse for the *relatives* than for the victim who can’t fully appreciate what’s happening to them.

Now since suicide is a legal act, it must be legal for all, I would argue, or legal for none. And if its legal for all, it is blatant discrimination against those with a disability to set a restriction on that right that they stand no chance of meeting (the DIY thing). This is a more serious discrimination than simple appearance-based stuff like eye or hair colour as it specifically impedes a class of people from exercising their rights simply because they are physically impaired.

Shaun,

Many people with clinical depression believe that they see the world with much greater clarity than others and want out. Existential phenomenology deals with that to some extent. But we tell them that we know better. One in ten then take their own, sometimes far from peaceful, measures when they might have preferred just to be able to take a drink of barbiturates.

It’s their physical impairment which prevents some people from taking their own lives, not the law. The law prohibits other people from aiding them in taking their own lives. That some people are going to face a debilitating and harrowing decline is a harsh fact. I expect to face one myself, as I have said.

I don’t think that my wishes, whatever they will be, when or if that time comes, should take precedence over the safety of others who may wish differently for themselves but have their wishes undermined by a ‘duty to die’. This is one law which has been with us for so long for a good reason.

Jim,

“It’s their physical impairment which prevents some people from taking their own lives, not the law.”

That’s a neat bit of sophistry. The law, as I’ve already shown, strives to put the disabled on an equal basis with the able bodied. Where that involves special rights, be it of employment or access, we deploy them in the interests of equality. All I want is for that law, that levelling of the playing field, to be extended to matters of suicide. Since it is also the law that penalises people who need assistance (or their assistants, I contend that it *is* the law which is operating in a way that puts the disabled at a disadvantage not presented to the able.

I’m not sure where you are getting this ‘Duty to die’ nonsense from – other than fellow traveller anti-assistance people like Melanie Phillips or strange Statists like Baroness Warnock. As I said, putting in safeguards would be simple – for example you could effectively have a trial before the act and if a Jury decides you are genuine and not being pressured then off you go.

“This is one law which has been with us for so long for a good reason.”

Not really. Its a leftover from the 1961 Suicide Act which was itself corrective of an ecclesiastically-driven monstrosity that would see people prosecuted for attempting to end their own lives and/or barred from a CoE burial if guilty. The reason has been, and remains, collective cowardice of Parliament to stand up to the religiously-inspired hectoring of the minority Churches (since no church in the UK has over 50% of people actively attending, they are ALL minonrity beliefs) to the extent that they can stand against 80% of public opinion.

If you can show me a ‘good’ reason for this, I’ll be rather surprised.

Shaun,

I wouldn’t argue that my preferences regarding the manner and timing of my death should even remotely risk, never mind cause, a danger to others. I’d rather face any discomfort myself than risk that and I’m not in the least religious or in the least fond of discomfort.

That risk, however remote, and I don’t think it’s that remote, is good enough reason for me to want to keep things as they are.

So basically you just don’t want people who need help to end their own suffering to get that help. Fair enough, but don’t delude yourself that this attitude ‘protects’ people of ’saves lives’.

All it does is ensure moral cowards continue to threaten people with prosecution for helping give effect to the wishes of someone disabled. These hypothetical people it would ‘protect’ don’t exist but you prize them above very real, actual people who do. In the alternative, if they do exist, having a screening system in place to weed out those being coerced into suicide would be simple.

That you can see that giving assistance to someone unable to act on their *lawful* desire is an intolerable risk is to your credit. That you want to perpetuate that risk makes you as callous as those in previous decades who viewed the disabled as some species of untermensch.

A screening system? Yeah? Design such a system for us then. Here. Today. What questions will you ask?

‘That you want to perpetuate that risk makes you as callous as those in previous decades who viewed the disabled as some species of untermensch’

That’s more contemptible than I’m prepared to respond to.

“A screening system? Yeah? Design such a system for us then. Here. Today. What questions will you ask? ”

Well, okay, Jim.

How about, rather than the DPP prosecuting people AFTER an assisted suicide (funny how coercion doesn’t bother you if you’re rich and go to Switzerland now… and funny how NOBODY has been prosecuted under the law you want upheld for coercing a relative to die. Not one), you could effectively have a trial BEFORE the act. Let a Judge and Jury decide if a person is of sound mind or being coerced into an assisted death. After all, the criminal courts make exactly these judgements every single day. If you’re on the level then you’d get permission to enlist assistance to end your life.

I would suspect that miscarriages of justice would err on the side of permission NOT being granted, but of course a ‘NO’ could be appealed through the usual hierarchy of courts.

I cannot see a link between mental illness, and that includes dementia, and a terminal physical condition.

Neither do I like the term assisted suicide. What is the difference between turning off a life suppot system and helping someone on their way because they have reached the point of no return. Is it not the same as offering a person in distress a taxi to get them home?

@timbone
“I cannot see a link between mental illness, and that includes dementia, and a terminal physical condition.”
I happen to agree, but as no-one else has answered your point I thought I’d play devil’s advocate…
When a person has a degenerative mental disease they see themselves (their personality or essence) slipping away. They look ahead and see themselves as no different than the brain dead person whose life is being kept going by machines that breath for them. It is a dreadful condition (I had a relative with dementia) that you couldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

As you look to leave this world (or be buried in it) then you realise all you have is the memories you leave other people. And to leave them with the image of you as a drooling, incompetent semi-person sitting in a wheelchair wearing a nappy, unable to recognise your own children is a step too far for most people. The wish to be able to end your existence before such a point is something I have the utmost sympathy for.

My main problem with all forms of premature termination is that there may come a cure. It is me pandering to my wish-fulfillment side, but I have faith in science and we just don’t know when that breakthrough will come. That leads me to say now “no matter how bad the pain I don’t want to die” but when I am in that pain I may feel differently.

@ Paul

Its not just a question of pain. Total paralysis with blindness is a real possibility with MS, for example. There is no cure. Yes, there are prospective treatments on the horizon – bionics, nanotech, stem cells and genetic engineering ALL hold out hope of treating if not the disease then certainly its debilitating symptoms. Whether the NHS will pay for things as exotic as neural implants, a wi-fi Central Nervous System and a Honda-esque exo-skeletal suit is another matter. All of these esoteric technologies are either in development or phase 1 & 2 medical trial.

The problem for me (and I suppose by extension others with similar ailments) is that this technology may not arrive. Either ever or in time to help. It might not work.

So while I hope for the best and try to get research pushed forwards (an open door since the Military-Industrial complex became interested in neurology last spring), I MUST plan for the worst. And the worst would be untreatable paralysis with neuropathic pain (pain generated within the brain/CNS and thus not treatable with painkillers) at which point I would want the option to die. The same option that I have today, while I can walk, talk and argue the toss. I don’t believe that becoming disabled should strip away that right.

@Shaun

True, in the absence of other evidence, jury decisions can come down to whether they believe somebody or not. But usually they have to choose between at least two different versions of an event. Would you suggest that an appointee of the court acts as a prolonging-life advocate and the ill person, family and friends, present the opposite case? I ask the question quite seriously.

@timbone

Depression is, in effect, a terminal illness for quite a few people. The difference is that they themselves are the agents of their death, rather than a physiological degeneration of some kind. Many people with depression, as I say, do not accept that they are actually ill. Whether that itself is a symptom of their illness is another question.

And,

‘funny how coercion doesn’t bother you if you’re rich and go to Switzerland now…’

Where did I say that that doesn’t bother me?

@ Jim

Sorry about the coercion thing – it was an intemperate ad hominem crack made from the sheer frustration I have about this issue and my own, unwilling, role in it.

And…

“Would you suggest that an appointee of the court acts as a prolonging-life advocate and the ill person, family and friends, present the opposite case?”

Basically yes; the cps/dpp would act as a ‘prosecution’ arguing that their is coercion based on the best case they can put together. The applicant will ‘defend’ against this and show that they are acting of their own free will. Obviously you could do this *after* an assisted suicide but that’s crueler – it means the dying person has no guarantee that others won’t be punished for helping give effect to their wishes. It should also stop abuse of the system.

If it sounds like an awful thing to put an essentially innocent person on trial, I’d say good. That will deter chancers and people on the make. I can assure you that when you have genuinely decided to die, a court case doesn’t matter a jot.

Oh, I should add that this would obviously necessitate a Police investigation which in my model would be the starting point of the application process. As I say, if you think about it, once a person has *genuinely* decided to die, they’ll jump through as many metaphorical hoops as they have to in order to get the help and (if genuine) won’t mind ‘helping the Police with their enquiries’.

@shaun,

That might be worth looking at, I agree. My fear has always been about ‘clinical assessments’. They are too much of a lottery. You get very good doctors who take the greatest care and you get others who don’t. And even the very good doctors don’t always agree with each other.

‘I can assure you that when you have genuinely decided to die, a court case doesn’t matter a jot.’

I don’t doubt that at all.

Guys, much as I sympathise, I would just like to point out the idiocy, illegality and sheer disgracefulness of arresting someone – and I can’t emphasise this enough – for taking a sick relative abroad!

Would we arrest someone for taking them to Lourdes?

That is not a straw man argument, taking someone abroad is taking someone abroad. If you participate then that is entirely different, but as far as I can see we are arresting people for assisting sickly relatives to move within Europe.

Sorry to try to drag you guys back on topic, I truly sympathise with your situation Shaun, but no-one has made a decent argument that enabling an adult to travel within Europe should be a criminal offence.

@Paul,

‘No-one has made a decent argument that enabling an adult to travel within Europe should be a criminal offence.’

You’d need to ask a lawyer but my guess would be that mens rea comes into it. It often does.

@Jim

I’m glad that I was able to demonsrate how simple a safeguard could be. Do I trust Judges? Well, as a subscriber to American Legal Realism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_realism), I trust them as much as anyone else! We have evolved bullshit detectors; there’s a great argument that we have evolved intelligence because as monkeys we learned the value of duplicity and have had to get ever smarter to not get f*cked but f*ck over others. Grim but it makes sense. That means I, on balance, trust juries. And that’s the most a person can hope for – that given 12 people, their aggregate decision is ‘reasonable’. In fact, that’s the basis of our criminal law…

@Paul

I think you’ve misread things; I’m arguing that it SHOULDN’T be an offence to assist suicide either in the UK or by helping someone travel abroad. Others are arguing that those things should REMAIN an offence (the situation at present), although are sketchy on why the DPP declines to ever prosecute anyone or indeed disclose his prosecution criteria. As an aside from the cruelty of that law being in place, denying people the certainty of whether or not their loved ones would be prosecuted for accompanying them to end their lives in Switzerland (see the Debbie Purdy case) is simply gratuitous.

@Shaun

I didn’t misread, I agree with your position. It is the mens rea (which I now have to go look up!) that Jim mentioned that I have issue with.

If you take mentally capable person (but physically incapable) out of the country that is all you have done. What that ADULT person then chooses to do when in that other country is their business. The UK gov should have no dominion over it.

All I was doing was trying to get away from the right to die argument – a very worthy debate – back onto the thing that p!sses me off which is criminalising a non-criminal act. You are not aiding and abetting suicide by helping someone board a fricking aeroplane! And if the law in this country says you are then the law is an ass. And it is up to lawmakers, like Tom, to change this outrageous set of circumstances.
And, yes, starting two (3?) consecutive sentences with ‘and’ is horrible grammar, live with it.