It has been a bad week for legal homicide. McMargo, Scottish champion of assisted dying, saw her End of Life Assistance Bill expire as eighty-five to sixteen Holyrood MSPs voted on Wednesday to give the proposals a fatal injection. The day before saw the launch of the own-goal Commission on Assisted Dying – an ‘independent commission’ bankrolled by the well known pro-death hat-stand Gaga Pratchett, set up by Dignity in Dying, and headed up as it is by the well known ‘make it Zurich for me’ proponent, Lord Falconer, whose selection of ‘independent commissioners’ is notably slewed towards fellow flight attendants, plug pullers and pillow snuffers. If this panel achieves true independence, so too will the Vatican’s Commission on God: Does He Really Exist?…
What McMargo and The Lord Flight Attendant are about, although they don’t put it in such terms, is liberalising the law on homicide. Suicide is properly no longer a criminal offence – there was nothing to be gained and much harm to be done by criminalising the act – but both homicide (the killing of one human being by another) and assisting suicide (in effect a form of partial homicide) remain, apart from the obvious clear exceptions in the case of homicide, criminal acts. What McMargo and The LFA intend is to relax that law: that is, to extend the bounds of legal homicide.
The Mob, just as it does for capital punishment, tends to favour death. A poll relied upon by McMargo reported almost four out of five respondents backed the proposed relaxation in the law to allow assisted suicide. Similarly, as an example, the majority Daily Mail ‘vox pop’ response to both the trial and appeal of filicidal Frances Inglis praised her courage in carrying out what others have called the ‘ultimate act of love’. And yet legislators and the judiciary remain to immune to the bawl of the Mob. Time and again our legislators reject change to the law; just as for Inglis, our judges rejected her appeal against conviction – she remains a murderess, even if her sentence was reduced.
Are our legislators and judges right to reject the will of the Mob? Dr No thinks they are. Put bluntly, the Mob is louder than it is intelligent or for that matter informed – a wider reading of the Inglis case suggests that Inglis was not so much killing ‘with love in her heart’, as extirpating her own understandable but insufficient to justify murder agony at the plight of her son. And yet, we are considering, quite literally, matters of life and death. We should be guided more by careful thought, than by the spontaneous but all too often thoughtless outpourings of the Mob – or the ill-thought out arguments of the more organised members of the pro-death lobby.
Much of the rhetoric of the pro-liberalisation lobby relies on the right to self-determination – the right of an individual of sound and settled mind to determine, without interference from the state, the time and manner of their own death. This is somewhat disingenuous, given that such self-determination, being suicide, is not illegal; and yet there is a proximal bleed of the liberal intent into related, currently criminal acts; a broadening and blurring, predicated on a notion that if suicide is not illegal, then surely a well intentioned compassionate assistant should not either considered a criminal?
In a pure, untainted world, such might even be the case. What McMargo, The LFA and all their pals – including the loud and vocal ‘how dare parliament tell me when I can die’ brigade – forget is that, even in a free society, there are some freedoms that must be curtailed, not with any intent to curb determined self-determination, but to protect those at the opposite end of the spectrum. The articulate will express their will, and for those in whom the will is strong enough, there will always be ways and means. Their fate need not concern us. What should concern us – in a civilised society – is the scope, in a loosened liberalised and perhaps unavoidably blurred reframing of the law on homicide, to allow, even foster, the emergence of sometimes overt, more often subtle and covert, pressures on the frail, weak and feeble to take the Warnock ticket, and end their days early, on a matter of social conscience and sensible convenience.
Let us be in no doubt. Those of sound and settled mind who wish to kill themselves are already free – whether we regret it or not – to do so under our moral and legal codes. What concerns us here is a liberalisation of the law of homicide, a blurring of boundaries, an accession of shades of grey. But, as in life and death itself, this is a matter that brooks no shades of grey. The moment we allow ourselves even the option of the assessment of lebensunwürdigen lebens, of ‘life unworthy of life’ in others, then we have cracked open a door to a sliding scale of harsh judgements, set on a skidpan of moral ice that, as night follows day, can only end here.
Or – to put it more formally: this, of course, is our old friend the deontological (do what is right and damn the consequences) opposed to the consequential (consequence rules) argument. It may well be deontologically proper to allow assisted suicide – but the real world consequences are just too awful.
“dignified death is a noble cause – but it doesn’t mean that we should kill a few innocents along the way”
That’s ‘it’ Dr No; the moral of the story!
If capital punishment was abolished for fear that some innocent individuals might lose their life for a crime they never committed, then it follows that AD must never be allowed to become legal on the same basis. Because you can never prove beyond doubt that the system, if legalised, won’t be abused by some, hence innocent people may be ‘killed’ prematurelly and without their consent too! Then the killer claiming it was their wish long after they have gone – and you can do nothing about it then!
Legalising Assissted Dying hence should be resisted based on the same principales that abolished capital punishment long ago! More so with AD, because all the potential AD victims are suspected of no crime other than being ill, frail and/or old! Unfair!
This is all about where the burden of the law falls. In a sense, pro euthanasia campaigners are making the case for keeping the law as it is, because they say it would only apply to a few dozen people a year (that’s what they said up in Scotland anyway.) If that is the case then why change? There isn’t a law in the land that can cover all eventualities; that is why we have a judge, a jury and a prosecution service to deal with situations on a case by case basis. To give an example; a man goes into a shop and steals a loaf. He gets caught and when he is before the judge, it turns out he did it because he was poor and hungry. The judge lets him off with a warning. But what doesn’t then happen is that the judge changes the law to say that stealing is ok, because in most cases it isn’t. And he wouldn’t either say that it was ok to steal as long as you were poor and hungry, because then you would have lawyers arguing about the definition of who was poor and if they came within a certain income bracket and how many calories you were meant to consume a day. It would become hopelessly confused. So it is with euthanasia. Once you start saying that its ok to kill certain classes of people because of illness or disability but not ok to do it to people who are physically healthy, you are introducing a value judgement and putting a price tag on someone. You are diminishing someone’s protection under the law, however well meant that is. And there isn’t a logical stopping point for that. When euthanasia started in the Netherlands, it too was only meant to be for people who were terminally ill. This March a petition with 100 000 signatures was handed into the Dutch parliament to force a debate. The subject? To allow people over the age of 70 who were healthy, but who considered their life ‘complete’ to be allowed to avail themselves of euthanasia. If we have any sense we will benefit from the Dutchs’ misfortune and not go down this slippery slope.
“The doctrines of double effect, and of not striving officiously to keep alive mean that in the very great vast majority of cases, a patient can be kept comfortable, and life not wrongly preserved against the natural tide of nature taking its course” – in theory, maybe, but we all know that access to palliative care is hit and miss at best, and always has been?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11902757
Isn’t it only recently that some services have finally woken up to the fact that patients with heart failure and COPD have been dying ghastly deaths, simply because the disease they suffered with fell outside the cancer paradigm so was not deemed appropriate for effective palliation?
Some are now saying similar things about conditions like Alzheimers and other irreversible dementias which also inflict all manner of degradations in the final stages?
Anyway, this is not about the pros/cons of palliative care, even though access is likely to prove increasingly problematic as the number of oldies mushroom over the next few decades, but instead the application of a medical framework to what is fundamentally an existential problem, albeit one with a significant medical component.
Of course, those of a religious disposition are also terribly worried about any sort of undermining of the notion of “sanctity of life” since such a posture is expressly forbidden within their particular belief system.
Nonetheless, many secularists regard recognition and acceptance of a person’s individual autonomy as one of the most important cornerstones of ‘being’ – for this group respect for autonomy, assuming capacity, just about trumps all other belief systems and there is a certain degree of resentment to the imposition of medical or religious values, however laudable these values might appear from a medical or religious perspective.
Most doctors do not want to intentionally end a person’s life – I fully accept and understand that, but nowadays technology exists that could in theory allow such actions to be placed in the hands of non-medics if that is what we, as a society, decide is a viable option amongst those who prefer to opt out of enduring the endgame of a horrible and irreversible illness.
So we have been slowly drip by drip anaesthetized by propaganda and a vocal minority who believe they have the right to die when they want to, even if they become so disabled that they cannot themselves perform the act. Having written an AD and in some cases made their intention clear to the media, they can happily wait for someone else to kill them when they choose.
Snag 1 is that these people know that they will not wish to die until they are completely unable to carry out the task themselves, so their concern is that if a compassionate relative or friend does the act for them, but who having assisted, maay then face the prospect of prosecution for having assisted a suicide. So an alternative has been suggested and brought into legislation.
Doctors can do it.
No need to go to Switzerland.
Snag 2. What if I am not compus mentis? I do not wish to live if I have Dementia/Alzeimer’s disease (even if I feel quite happy and don’t know much about it and cannot remember if have written my AD?
The Doctor can do it in real time.
Snag 3
What if I go into hospital and I am not terminally ill with Dementia but I have got an infection?
Don’t worry – you’ll be even more confused with your infection and the Doctor will think that you are much more demented than you really are. You won’t have to make a decision, the doctor will make it for you.
You will still not know a thing, and I doubt your relatives will either.
What if I don’t have Dementia at all and I am just temporarily in a coma from a stroke or just confused?
The doctor may also be confused.
What if I am mentally ill?
Pass
______________________________
This legislation should never have reached the statute books. It should have been left to the individual doctors in individual cases who know their patient’s needs and, when they know their patient well enough to know death is imminent. Their primary concern is then comfort, together with relief of pain and to inform relatives.
Doctors should not be asked to assist suicides. Their role should only be in treating a patient who is actually dying, not to put in train a protocol (such as the Liverpool Pathway) to bring on or hasten their death. People have a habit of dying in their own time, not someone else’s.
I attended a Warnock lecture on the “Meaning of Life”. Five minutes into the lecture I realised that it was all about getting rid of people who have dementia. Her thrust was that everyone should sign an advance directive to be put down by the medical profession when the disease became advanced. This should be done, she opined, on her premise that it was immoral of Alzheimer/Dementia sufferers to burden the NHS with the cost of looking after them.
Relatives may not be the only people exercising coercion.
Web: Doctors help One in Eight to die
Sentenced to death by the NHS
So we have been slowly drip by drip anaesthetized by propaganda and a vocal minority who believe they have the right to die when they want to, even if they become so disabled that they cannot themselves perform the act. Having written an AD and in some cases made their intention clear to the media, they can happily wait for someone else to kill them when they choose.
Snag 1 is that these people know that they will not wish to die until they are completely unable to carry out the task themselves, so their concern is that if a compassionate relative or friend does the act for them, but who having assisted, maay then face the prospect of prosecution for having assisted a suicide. So an alternative has been suggested and brought into legislation.
Doctors can do it.
No need to go to Switzerland.
Snag 2. What if I am not compus mentis? I do not wish to live if I have Dementia/Alzeimer’s disease (even if I feel quite happy and don’t know much about it and cannot remember if have written my AD?
The Doctor can do it in real time.
Snag 3
What if I go into hospital and I am not terminally ill with Dementia but I have got an infection?
Don’t worry – you’ll be even more confused with your infection and the Doctor will think that you are much more demented than you really are. You won’t have to make a decision, the doctor will make it for you.
You will still not know a thing, and I doubt your relatives will either.
What if I don’t have Dementia at all and I am just temporarily in a coma from a stroke or just confused?
The doctor may also be confused.
What if I am mentally ill?
Pass
______________________________
This legislation should never have reached the statute books. It should have been left to the individual doctors in individual cases who know their patient’s needs and, when they know their patient well enough to know death is imminent. Their primary concern is then comfort, together with relief of pain and to inform relatives.
Doctors should not be asked to assist suicides. Their role should only be in treating a patient who is actually dying, not to put in train a protocol (such as the Liverpool Pathway) to bring on or hasten their death. People have a habit of dying in their own time, not someone else’s.
I attended a Warnock lecture on the “Meaning of Life”. Five minutes into the lecture I realised that it was all about getting rid of people who have dementia. Her thrust was that everyone should sign an advance directive to be put down by the medical profession when the disease became advanced. This should be done, she opined, on her premise that it was immoral of Alzheimer/Dementia sufferers to burden the NHS with the cost of looking after them.
Relatives may not be the only people exercising coercion.
Web: Doctors help One in Eight to die
Sentenced to death by the NHS
Perhaps Interwingler will be pleased that there is one less ‘propagandist’ to worry about?
http://www.jacquelinejencquel.com/post/nan-maitland-british-activist-ends-her-life-in-switzerland.htm
Nan Maitland said, “For some time, my life has consisted of more pain than pleasure and over the next months and years the pain will be more and the pleasure less. I have a great feeling of relief that I will have no further need to struggle through each day in dread of what further horrors may lie in wait. For many years, I have feared the long period of decline, sometimes called ‘prolonged dwindling’, that so many people unfortunately experience before they die. Please be happy for me that I have been able to escape from this, for me, unbearable future. I have had a wonderful life, and the great good fortune to die at a time of my own choosing, and in the good company of two FATE colleagues. With my death, on March 1st, I feel I am fully accepting the concept of ‘old age rational suicide’ which I have been very pleased to promote”.
Just looking at the Oregon experience – or why Oregonians have forced the issue on ‘a good death’?
It would appear ‘loss of autonomy’, ‘decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable’, and ‘loss of dignity’ are the recurring, and enduring themes (so nothing to do with accessing palliative care, or bumping of demented grannies).
http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Documents/year13.pdf
People who chose an assisted death tend to be white, aged between 65 and 84, often university educated, always terminally ill and almost always enrolled in palliative care.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/right-to-good-death