Common sense and compassion

MPs will vote today on the assisted dying bill.

Five hours have been allocated for the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which many people - including some MPs - feel is not enough to fully explore all the pros and cons.

I am torn on the issue, and if push came to shove I would probably side with those who think Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill is not the right vehicle to introduce such a groundbreaking piece of legislation.

I am nevertheless sympathetic to the aim of the Bill which seeks to give people greater autonomy over their own bodies, and the manner of their own death.

Here’s a post I wrote in April 2011, 13 years ago. It covers a similar area and is vaguely relevant to today’s debate:

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 care 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?

In a way it’s a pity that we even need legislation to confer legitimacy on assisted death.

I have mentioned this before but my grandfather (on my mother’s side of the family) was a GP before and after the war (ie before and after the introduction of the NHS in 1948).

According to my mother, it wasn’t uncommon in those days for doctors to ‘help’ terminally ill patients who were in severe pain die by discreetly administering a fatal dose of morphine to end their suffering.

The difference then was that family doctors - for whom home visits were a normal part of the job - almost certainly knew the patient and the family pretty well so there was a bond with the family that rarely exists now.

Today few if any GPs would risk prosecution, so decisions that were once made by individual doctors will now be made by a committee of people representing the state, and those decisions could take months, prolonging someone’s suffering, and for what purpose?

I accept that this is not a black and white issue. There are grey areas that need to be addressed, and for that reason I think it’s important the Bill is not railroaded through.

The principle of assisted dying is not, however, unreasonable. It’s humane. It’s just a pity the state has to intervene in an area where qualified doctors once exercised their common sense and compassion.

See: The Assisted Dying Bill: A guide to the Private Member's Bill process (Hansard Society)