Doctors have an important voice in the assisted dying debate, and I thank Dr Lucy Thomas for suggesting an alternative proposal for how the law should change (I see the worrying consequences of assisted dying in other countries. Britain’s bill needs a radical rethink, 2 October). Outsourcing choice at the end of life to “a new non-clinical” service is not a novel idea, indeed it was comprehensively rejected earlier this year by politicians in the Isle of Man, who voted in favour of embedding assisted dying within their healthcare system. I too cannot accept that such a radical concept would be preferable to a safe, person-centred, tried and tested model of assisted dying that 300 million people around the world already have access to.
My bill in the House of Lords will enable terminally ill, mentally competent adults to have the option of assisted dying. It has clear eligibility criteria and a set of practical measures to support assess
A change in the law is urgently needed to unpick the mess that this country’s blanket ban on assisted dying has created, which offers no protection to anyone in society and is unspeakably cruel to dying people, their families and those who care for them. The vast majority of Britons agree that the law must change.
An assisted dying law will give dying people the means to die on their own terms, safely and compassionately, and avoid being forced to suffer against their wishes, however they might define what suffering means to them. I believe it is fundamentally wrong to conflate the complex and deeply personal reasons that a person, when in their final few months of life, might have for wishing to exercise control over the manner and timing of their imminent death with suicidal ideation. To do so betrays a misunderstanding of the value of choice at the end of life. I am not alone in this view. Suicide prevention leaders in Australia – where every state has legalised assisted dying since MPs in this country last considered a bill – recently warned that conflating these two distinct issues is both inaccurate and damaging.
Parliament will soon debate assisted dying. I encourage my colleagues to vote with their consciences, but their consciences should tell them that a vote against a change in the law is in effect a vote in favour of a status quo that is demonstrably unsafe and unpopular.
Charles Falconer
Labour, House of Lords
• Regarding the article by Lucy Thomas, I was an NHS consultant in pain management. It was not unusual to meet people who, after years of ineffectual treatment, were depressed, and some were genuinely suicidal. It was more common for patients to express their despair and fear of continuing pain in terms of suicidal thoughts. Many patients had access to medication that was potentially fatal in overdose.
Treatment was often difficult because our society has great difficulty in accepting the psychological damage that accompanies chronic illness. Treatment with a psychological dimension, despite the widespread ridicule, anger and scepticism regularly reported in our media and expressed in clinics, can be transformative. As a result, and as a result of my experience of serious illness as both an anaesthetist and the son of parents who both died in hospices, I am wary to the point of rejecting any politician’s necessarily simple recipe for euthanasia.
Dr Tim Priest
Solihull, West Midlands
• Having struggled with anxiety for most of my adult life, I’ve always been rather poor at coping with health issues, real or imaginary. Having watched both my parents succumb to debilitating dementia, I am horrified by the prospect of going the same way or finding myself facing an incurable illness. I’ve written instructions, which I’ve shared with my adult children. Should I end up facing a protracted and distressing exit, it’s my express wish that my lads take their old man on a one-way trip to Switzerland.
Death holds no horrors – it’s either oblivion or the adventure of my life/death. My lads are absolutely fine with this, so, God willing, the bill will be passed. I’m 70 and still work full-time.
Colin White
Hartlepool, County Durham
• I wonder what Lucy Thomas would say to my son and granddaughters, who have agreed that I should have access to assisted dying. We were discussing my fast-ageing 87-year-old body, which now has also to deal with Alzheimer’s. I can barely walk. My memory is going – I barely remember faces. I used to be able to type without mistakes, but now I hit the wrong keys again and again. Despite my age, as a historian I continue to – or at least try to – research and write. It’s more and more difficult, and very slow.
For me, and for them, the very idea of someone having to come to wash me or dress me or feed me is unacceptable. As is being unable to work. So I should just be able to get help to pass 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 illness, it is not proximity to the grave that I would like considered should anyone, me included, wish to access an assisted death. It is, as Ms Thomas writes, “intractable suffering” that should both make an assisted death available to an individual and be the only metric by which their decision to die is assessed. This places no expectation on any group that they must want to or even should die based on their medical status, and excludes no other group from the compassionate end that assisted dying has the potential to afford.
Sophie Korevaar
Bristol
• While Lucy Thomas makes some very good points about assisted dying, she also approaches it from the viewpoint of a palliative care professional. Due to NHS underfunding, doctors like her are often unavailable to those who need them most. The current government’s statement that further funding will only occur after root and branch reform means that they may not be common in parts of the UK for some time.
Disentangling the legal aspects from medical ones might seem sensible, but our courts, like our medical services, are stretched to the limit and might not be up to the task. It seems that what Ms Thomas is proposing is pushing the problem down the road until we reach a just, compassionate society that does not at present exist.
While I sympathise with her position, as someone with a terminal disease who intends to enjoy what time I have left until I become a burden to myself, I would hope that Lord Falconer would take her opinion on board while also remaining firmly grounded in reality.
Mary Foster
Newport, Isle of Wight
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
