Dying in Dignity- the debate continues...

28/05/2008

I see that references to the article by Sarah Wootton, Chief Executive of Dying in Dignity, still keep cropping up in your mailbag, so hopefully I’m not too late to add my penn’orth.

 

Although it had the headline: In Law, just whose life is it anyway? This salient point didn't actually seem to be discussed in the article.

 

When it comes to voluntary euthanasia, this surely should be the crux of the matter.  Shouldn't you have the finite legal rights to your own body?

 

And who do you, as a person, actually belong to?

 

Is it the Government, who no doubt prevails in the belief that you belong to the State?  Unless of course you're elderly, and are trying to avail yourself of help from the Welfare branch of the State - that you paid into all your working life in the mistaken belief that they would look after you when you needed it most.

 

Or is it the church, and their respective god?  But then surveys show that apparently some 80% of - at least our 'indigenous' population - have no religious beliefs; and to confirm that, more and more people are choosing to have humanist or civil funerals, without the hypocritical mumbo-jumbo of a religious service. (Yes, there are alternatives out there if you care to enquire).

 

Some might say that we belong to our nearest and dearest; if we're lucky enough to have someone that fits into that category.  But hopefully, they are the very people that you will have already discussed this issue with whenever the subject has cropped up in the media.  So they should already know your feelings on this matter, and likewise, you theirs.

 

But surely, in the cold light of day, you belong to yourself.  

 

Others may offer their opinions or wishes on the matter, but in the end the decision should be yours.

 

You had absolutely no say about your arrival in this world.  The least they can do is allow you to decide, to a degree, how you leave it.

Doctors, with the necessary knowledge and skills, have helped people pass away peacefully and with dignity for years.  But then Doctor Shipman got a bit too enthusiastic and spoilt it for everybody.  Now extra legislation has been passed to prevent even good and honourable doctors from helping someone to a peaceful, if slightly premature death.

 

Fortunately, as cited in Sarah Wotton's article, at least it seems that judges are using common sense in cases where family members or close friends are now having to do, in their own crude way, what doctors used to be able to do.  I remember in the media, a couple of years or so ago, where a loving husband, with no other means, actually resorted to cutting the throat of his terminally ill wife after she pleaded with him to help her die.  How much worse does it really have to get before the bible-bashing do-gooder minority can be overridden, and the powers-that-be accept that the vast majority of people in this country would actually vote for a party that promised to introduce voluntary euthanasia?

 

Mind you, reading the article, it would seem that even then we could have a Catch-22 situation.  The proposed safeguards suggested by Dying in Dignity include the stipulations that 'the person is in a sound state of mind', and, 'is in the last stages of a terminal illness'. 

 

Now by the time you get to the last stages of a terminal illness, you may have problems, through lack of being able to communicate fluently enough, in proving that you still are of sound state of mind.  And tough luck on anyone suffering from a dementia based terminal illness such as Alzheimer's.

 

Perhaps Dying in Dignity could issue cards, rather like Organ Donor cards, that we can sign and pin up above our beds.  If we get terminally ill this card could then go with us, to hospital, hospice or care home, so people know of our wishes.  There obviously have to be safeguards of course, to stop unscrupulous relatives getting their hands prematurely on 'Auntie's estate'.  

 

But let's move forward on this.  A few other countries and certain states in the USA have either adopted or 'blind eye' it, and I'm not aware of any reports of mass geriatricide.  I would have thought our Government would (with respectful tardiness) jump at the idea.  It would save the NHS a fortune!

 

B. Goodliffe
Leighton Buzzard