It is striking that only three of the 11 individuals in your article (The Britons who made their final journey to Dignitas clinic, 27 June) are described as being terminally ill. This confirms an analysis we submitted to the health and social care select committee that showed that fewer than half of the Britons who have had an assisted death in Switzerland would be “reasonably expected to die within six months”.
This requirement has been central to all recent private members’ bills seeking to legalise assisted dying, and would exclude most neurological conditions, including those of Tony Nicklinson and Paul Lamb, whose supreme court challenge remains a landmark case in the fight to change the law.
As the select committee heard at its meeting last week (Dignitas has helped 540 British people die, MPs told, 27 June), assisted dying has been legal in Switzerland for more than 80 years. Any slippery slopes would surely have been slid down by now. Yet Switzerland is a civilised society where the vulnerable are respected and cared for, and where good palliative care medicine thrives. The Swiss are at ease with their law.
A safe and effective model for assisted dying exists; 80% of the population want assisted dying legalised. How can parliament defend further inaction, which just prolongs the intolerable suffering of so many of our fellow citizens?
Dr Graham Winyard and Dr Colin Brewer
Co-chairs, clinical advisory group, My Death, My Decision
• My partner suffered from advanced metastatic cancer. After many years of successful treatment, it finally invaded and corroded his bones, leaving him with fractured vertebrae, eventually a fractured femur, and increasingly unmanageable pain. Last August he made the choice to die, as provided by our home state, Maine, in the US.
The business of dying naturally may not be for wimps, as Zoe Williams says (Assisted dying is on nobody’s bucket list – but preventing it is deeply unjust, 28 June), but in my experience, choosing assisted dying isn’t for wimps either.
It takes courage to swallow the prescription that will ease you into unconsciousness and then death – even when you are in unceasing pain, or your life is so restricted that there is no joy to be found in it. It takes courage to sort through your fears of burdening your family on the one hand, and feelings of “abandoning” them on the other. And it requires courage on the part of every family member to participate in the honest conversations needed to sort through those fears and feelings.
Denying people the choice to decide when enough is enough, and to have support in dying as they choose, is indeed “deeply unjust” as Williams says. Making that choice available also supports a courageous confrontation with mortality, letting us ask the practical questions about how and where we will die.
In our case, knowing that assisted dying was one possible choice meant talking about it with family, friends and doctors many months earlier. We explored the differences between dying in a hospital as the result of some ultimate crisis; dying in hospice care, balancing pain relief against staying conscious; or instead choosing a conscious death.
My partner died in his own bed. His two sons and I were with him, and he took the medicine after a day of loving connection and conversation. For him and for us, it was the right choice.
Clare Dalton
Portland, Maine, US
• Zoe Williams characterises opponents of assisted dying as strident and emotional, while its supporters are part of “the incremental march of reason”. I don’t recognise this description. I wonder, for example, if she read Polly Toynbee’s article of 19 January that contrasted assisted dying to an alternative of “exiting through the torture chamber” after what might be “months of excruciating pain, horror and humiliation”, ending with the “last moments of life disfigured by terror”.
The idea of dignity has been appropriated by supporters of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Rarely do they quote the findings of the Office for National Statistics’ National Survey of Bereaved People (Voices, Views of Informal Carers – Evaluation of Services), which found that more than 95% of respondents said their relative had been treated with dignity and respect by palliative care staff during the last three months of their life.
Even the term “assisted dying” is a rhetorical ploy, a euphemism to avoid the unpopular mention of euthanasia or assisted suicide. It is a successful one; in a 2021 survey conducted on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group for dying well, fewer than half of respondents understood that assisted dying referred to providing people with lethal drugs to end life.
I am not religious and I don’t have some “woo-woo sense that the universe must be left to move in its own mysterious way”, but I do oppose assisted dying legislation. It will, in the name of personal choice for some, put many vulnerable people at risk by changing how society views suicide and the value of lives lived with severe illness or disability.
Allan House
Emeritus professor of liaison psychiatry, University of Leeds
• Zoe Williams states in her excellent piece on assisted dying that medics don’t support it publicly “for fear of repercussions”. In fact that is no longer the case.
After surveying their members, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons have all dropped their opposition to assisted dying and adopted a position of neutrality. The Royal College of Nursing has been neutral for many years.
Most doctors now understand that assisted dying offers a compassionate choice at the end of life and that more than 80% of their patients would like a law that gives them that choice. More than 200 million people around the world now have access to assisted dying and no jurisdiction has ever dropped legislation. Oregon has had legislation in place for more than 25 years and there is no evidence that a law threatens the disabled or the elderly, and plenty of evidence that it can reduce unbearable suffering for the mentally competent and terminally ill patient.
It is time for our politicians to listen to patients and their doctors. No more people will die but fewer will suffer.
Dr Jacky Davis
Chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying
• I read Zoe Williams’ article on assisted dying with interest and with a growing conviction that in this matter, as in much else, the UK is out of step with many of its neighbours. I live in Belgium, where it has been a legal request for 21 years. My wife and I have both long since filled in the forms and filed them with the public health authorities. There are a number of safeguards, involving independent medical assessment of the applicant’s condition and the designation by the applicant of “persons of confidence” who have to agree with the request. They may not be related to the applicant or in a position to benefit from the death. It’s a great relief to know that we won’t have to go through the suffering that we have seen friends and family members undergo in Britain.
Richard Condon
Brussels, Belgium
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