We’ve now had sight of the Assisted Dying Bill that we will debate on 29th November. The lobbying has been under way for some time. Already I’ve had literally hundreds of letters and emails.
Now the meetings have started too, with invitations to discussions led by any number of eminent people. On Tuesday I went to one addressed by Liz Carr, the actress who is one of the stars in the BBC drama Silent Witness. She’s made a documentary entitled Better off Dead. It is well worth watching, whatever angle you come at the subject from. You’ll find it on BBC i-Player.
The principal strength of the Bill is that it avoids, to some extent at least, the profound impact on the medical profession that authorising practitioners to kill their patients would have. The key point here is that patients will have to do the deed themselves, having first secured a terminal prognosis of death within six months, confirmed by two doctors and signed off by a judge. Only then can the prescription be had, which -I reiterate- must be administered by the patient.
The difficulty with this is that it is also the Bill’s weakest point too. Most of the reservations of those who oppose the bill are that it is the start of a slippery slope. That once the principle of assisted death is breached, then the permitted circumstances will be swiftly extended, as they have in so many other jurisdictions. This was certainly my own reservation when I blogged previously Medically Assisted Death .
The problem is that the Bill’s method fails to address the aspirations of those who have been campaigning hardest for the service. Patients with progressive wasting conditions want to continue life as long as its quality is bearable. When it becomes unbearable, they want to die. The terrible dilemma they face is that, whilst they do not want to die early and before they are really ready, their condition may, at any time, rob them of the ability to take the potion themselves, making them them reliant on what remains the unlawful agency of someone else. They will have to die by their own hand early or run the risk of being unable to do the deed at all, so either facing exactly the sort of death that they feared or having to secure unlawful assistance.
This Bill will not help them. So, the self-administration requirement will be the focus of the first campaign to extend the Bill’s provisions and allow the doctor to administer the drugs.
Next, campaigners will question the cruelty of the requirement for a six-month terminal prognosis. If you are suffering unbearably and expected to live for a year, why should you have to endure another six months of agony before you qualify. Indeed, if you are in agony, or extreme misery, and are desperate for the relief of death, why should you need a terminal prognosis at all?
If the Netherlands can be so humane as to accommodate the death wishes of those who experience a much wider are extremity of circumstances, why shouldn’t we?
The cast iron guarantees of the Bill -death in six months; two doctors, a judge, and self-administration, are merely an aiming target for further reform. It is indeed a slippery slope.