Nanny does not know best – resist the push to legalise assisted suicide

Assisted suicide advocates say that allowing people to choose for themselves the time and manner of their death is the caring and compassionate thing to do for those in the end stages of life.  They conveniently gloss over the fact that, in jurisdictions where this has already been legalised, the right to die has rapidly become a slippery slope leading to mass culling of the elderly and vulnerable, who need not be in imminent expectation of death at all.

In Canada, for instance, where medically assisted death and assisted suicide were legalised in 2016, under the strict condition that death was reasonably foreseeable, by 2021 it had become extended to grievous and irremediable conditions not causing death and, more recently, has been offered to army veterans and the disabled, as an alternative to providing expensive medical treatment.  Chillingly, medically assisted dying in Canada last year accounted for 4.1% of all deaths.

Closer to home, in the Netherlands, where euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legal since 2002, the law has now been extended to those experiencing what they see as unbearable suffering, including psychiatric conditions, with no need for any element of physical pain or discomfort at all.  Euthanasia has also now been extended to children between the ages of 1 – 12 who are deemed to be suffering ‘unbearably’ and are seen as having no hope of improvement.

On whose assessment?

In June this year, much was also made in the press of a married couple from Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, who elected to die together by lethal injection.  Were they both suffering from terminal illness?  No, they were not.  The husband was suffering from fairly mild back pain, and the wife had recently been diagnosed with dementia.  The reason for their ‘choice’ was that they didn’t want their conditions to deteriorate further, and neither wanted to face life alone.  Which apparently is justification for the emerging trend in duo-euthanasia now being seen in the Netherland – where couples feel that, without the other, life will be unbearable.

Right to die campaigners in the UK, however, are undeterred.  Assisted suicide allows a person to die with dignity, they say, and to have control of their situation.  And whatever’s happening abroad, good old Britain will put safeguards in place!  Really?  Last year, VfJUK published a report entitled When End of Life Care Goes Wrong.  It included 17 case studies of families left bereft after their loved ones had prematurely and inappropriately died following admission to hospital – their deaths intentionally brought about by medical staff, who decided that their lives were no longer worth living.

The case studies were assessed by a leading doctor, Emeritus Professor Sam Ahmedzai FRCP, and a medical negligence lawyer, barrister James Bogle.  Their assessments make shocking reading, and in at least 14 of the 17 cases, James Bogle identified homicide as the possible cause of death.

On Thursday of this week, Sky carried the news that police have now identified 24 suspects in their investigation into the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, Hampshire, linked to the use of opioids, administered with the intention of causing death.

At an initial investigation in 2018, a Gosport Independent Panel had concluded that ‘the lives of more than 450 people had been shortened because of the routine use of the drugs up to the year 2000’.  Our Report shows that this practice still continues throughout hospitals in the UK, with Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders routinely being put in place for elderly and/or vulnerable patients admitted to hospital, often for relatively trivial complaints.  Where a DNR is in place, it will often be accompanied by the withdrawal of all food, hydration and medication, accompanied by the inappropriate prescription of opioids, designed to hasten death.

This is euthanasia, something that at this moment in time is illegal under UK law.  Yet it is happening daily – to people who want to live, but are not given a choice.

If this is happening already, what, in the name of heaven, will happen once so-called assisted death becomes legal?  No one going into hospital will be safe.  Please read our report to find out what’s going on in our hospitals today, then write to your MP, calling on him or her to vote against the dangerous and pernicious Bill being introduced into Parliament by Kim Leadbeater MP on 16^th October.

Legalising assisted suicide is not compassion.  Rather, it is giving the State power to determine who does, and doesn’t, get the chance to live.  And don’t be fooled by assertions that there will be ‘safeguards’.  Experience tells us that, once the line is crossed, ‘safeguards’ will be steadily done away with, so that no-one will be safe.

In our financially straitened climate, with the NHS already at breaking point, what chance will the ‘burdensome’ have of life?

Get our Report here:
https://vfjuk.org/product/when-end-of-life-care-goes-wrong-report/

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We aim to uncover the truth!

October hearing schedule

Revd Peter Simpson: 10 a.m. Wednesday 23rd October

Members of the public are welcome to attend hearings on application to our office, where you can also get further information and help to apply, if you would like to give testimony yourself.

Email: office@cidac.org.uk

Our one year Interim Report is now available for reading.

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