Let's call it assisted death not suicide
Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 16:20 According to a story on the front page of the Sunday Times today, 'Woman commits suicide to avoid old age'.
Nan Maitland, 84, took her life at a Swiss clinic by swallowing a lethal solution. She "suffered from arthritis but was active and not terminally ill".
It's actually quite a nice story. The night before she died she "enjoyed a three-hour meal with friends in a five-star Swiss hotel". She left a message saying, "I have had a wonderful life and the good fortune to die at a time of my own choosing".
What I don't like is the repeated use of the word "suicide" in the article. Suicide suggests desperation, hopelessness, even mental instability at the time of death. Yet the paper reports that "When [Maitland] said goodbye to loved ones in London, her final farewells were calm and unemotional".
This wasn't suicide as we generally understand it. It was an "assisted death", something quite different. There is a stigma attached to suicide. None should attach itself to assisted death.
What also annoys me is the sentence that reads:
Her case has led to accusations that relaxation in the law on assisted suicide will lead to people dying who could have continued in meaningful lives.
Who decides whether someone's life is meaningful? The state? Certainly not. Campaigners who think they know what's best for you? Think again.
If people choose to end their lives prematurely via an assisted death it should be up to the individual in consultation, perhaps, with immediate family. Ultimately and within reason (age and infirmity should, I think, be taken into account), it must be your choice.
I am interested in assisted death because I don't rule it out for myself when I am older. Frankly, I don't fancy a long retirement if my health is poor and I have very little money. Having family and friends around me may keep me going but I wouldn't want to depend on them (for their sake) and if I was on my own, spending long hours in and out of hospital or confined to a small apartment or retirement home ... well, you get my drift.
Some years ago I read a story about a retired couple, both university dons, in their seventies but beginning to suffer from long-term ill-health. While they were still compos mentis they made a pact and travelled to Inverness where they caught the overnight sleeper to London.
The following morning the steward knocked on the door of their compartment (first class, I hope!) and when there was no answer he opened it and found both of them in their beds, dead. Back home they had left messages for their family, and all their affairs had been put in order. Their credit cards, I believe, were neatly laid out on the kitchen table along with their wills and other information.
They had also left a message for the steward, apologising for the shock he must have felt when he found their bodies, and assuring him that there was nothing he could have done to stop them.
I thought that was a pretty good way to go. The only thing to beat it, in my view, would be dying in your sleep of natural causes. And how many of us can look forward to that?
PS. Later this month I am visiting Switzerland with my family. I have no immediate plans for an assisted death so on this occasion, unless something untoward happens, I intend to return home alive and kicking.
Reader Comments (3)
"Who decides whether someone's life is meaningful? The state? Certainly not. Campaigners who think they know what's best for you? Think again."
I couldn't agree more Simon but I am wary of backing legal support to assisted death or suicide because of the above. There is always the risk that unscrupulous relatives or the state in time could decide what's best for us when we might decide that our life is meaningful when they do not.
What next? The state decides that smokers have lives without meaning and so we all get shipped off to Switzerland "for our own good and that of others." It would also be yet another great quit motivator for sure!
An interesting but entirely controversial subject and one I find hard to come down on either side.
"This wasn't suicide as we generally understand it. It was an "assisted death", something quite different. There is a stigma attached to suicide. None should attach itself to assisted death."
I think that it's still suicide, no matter how language is used to prettify it and either you must disapprove of both or neither.
"Ultimately and within reason (age and infirmity should, I think, be taken into account), it must be your choice. "
But once you start to set conditions such as age and infirmity then the decision is no longer in the gift of the indiviidual. Should the Swiss clinic have turned away a young Stephen Hawking had he made what many would consider the rational decision that he no longer wanted to live?
Iincreasing numbers of people are suffering from dementia and unable to make such a decision. At the moment they can legally authorise others to make profound decisions about medical treatment. How long before the law allows the decision to be made on their behalf that 'they wouldn't want to live like this'?
Let's keep calling it suicide - 'assisted death' is too cuddly and dangerous a term!
The phrase sounds dangerlously like politically correct good-speak which has often lead to no good outcomes in the end. I'd be hesitant when it comes to giving good-sounding euphemisms to ideas that could be subject to abuse later on. Once accepted, through acceptance of the politically correct good-sounding euphemisms, some very bad consequences could walk in unannounced and be unchallengible once let through the door.