A working sunday for me today, preparing for speaking at the 2nd National Conference on Palliative Care next thursday morning about my support for legislative change to permit medically assisted dying for the terminally ill. At present many palliative care physicians, unlike over 80% of the general public, are against the idea and I know I shall feel like Daniel in the Lion’s den. Nearly always at medical conferences I am put into a debate style discussion which is not really conducive to exploring the issues we share in common about how to promote a dignified death for everyone.
I was moved this week by the speech to the Scottish Parliament by Margo MacDonald MSP about her support for medically assisted dying, knowing she has advancing Parkinson’s Disease. For me it’s all about autonomy and recognising patients’ right to choose their own time of going when they are mentally fit to do so and being more honest about how doctors help now.
Apart from moral arguments, Euthanasia would fill the courts with people who would insist that their disease does/doesn’t did/didn’t qualify them to kill themselves/their family members. Was the patient of sound mind? Was the patient in sufficient discomfort to warrant this assisted suicide? Does mental anguish qualify if you cannot bare to live any longer? What is the moral difference between suicide and euthanasia when the same result is achieved by effectively the same methods- except with the presence of a doctor. Why should doctors, many of whom are already unhappy about the idea, be compelled to kill people as part of their job when many of them are dedicated to keeping people alive?
All of these questions are ones which would have to be answered before Euthanasia can become law. Then the moral issues can be tackled with clarity.
I’m nobody special sir, but if there’s any way I can help you on this matter, please say so.
And I would have thought that of COURSE 80% of palliative care physicians would oppose you: there would be a lot of redundancies amongst them if you had your way.
Perhaps a way to approach this would be legislation allowing pharmacists to sell unlimited amounts of barbiturates on demand (with a register of course).
I wish you the best of luck, as the old saying goes, you would not let a dog suffer like that.
My mother worked in health care all of her working life, as a nurse, then ward sister, then as a district nurse before retiring in the early 1970s, I do therefore have many stories from the Hypodermic face as it were.
The ones that interested me most were those about GPs attitudes. When healthcare was nationalised she said that they “cried like babies” over what they thought would be a loss of income. They did however settle in to their new home.
She thought that they were basically a group of decent people but that they all belonged to one of the most reactionary organisations on the planet, the BMA.
She also said that the practice of giving a “gentle nudge” to the terminally ill patients who were suffering, by GPs was widespread (and quite rightly so)
This practice I would imagine has now, because of political correctness, stopped so causing more suffering.
Once again good luck in your battle with the old reactionary`s
The moral issues that CommonSenseAlliance raises generally discount the wishes of the individual, and assessment of sanity, pain, etc are made by the same doctors who are currently deciding who gets what treatment due to financial constraints.
The difference between a successful suicide and euthanasia will be the same. The problem is that many suicide attempts are botched, and others are recognised as cries for help. Further, there are some who also take the lives of other in their quest to die. Euthanasia is absolute and painless, and selfish.
I understand the Swiss police look into cases of ‘assisted suicide’ in much the same way as a trial was held after a state execution in the UK.
While the majority of doctors do not approve of euthanasia, there are a few who would assist. I don’t believe there would be a need for more than a handful of such doctors.
As with the thousands of Irish women who came to England to have a legal abortion, I will be one who will be forced to go to The Netherlands to die rather than in the comfort of my own bed.
As an American, I am very interested in this blog and the openness of the opinions expressed. As an adjunct professor at a medical school, teaching a course on Online Health Communities, I frequently read and hear about the despair experienced by people who have, or care for loved ones, with diseases for which there is no cure. I am curious what data exists from the places that have made medically-assisted dying legal, in terms of the number of cases, physician attitudes, and any abuse that takes place as raised in a comment above.
Good job our souls are eternal.
If doctors are already deciding to help along patients who are terminally ill then I think it should be done out in the open.
I have three reasons:
One is the specture of Dr. Shipman.
Another is the possibility of a doctor well-meaningly helping along someone, and later it being discovered and treated as murder (as I guess it would be at present).
Lastly, if it is alreaddy happening then the people most directly effected – the patient and their family should be involved, it shouuldn’t be somthing that is done to them.
Yes, there are problems of informed consent – in most cases I think these could be overcome. (A possible problem area is degenerative diseases – is it ethically sound for a person to say at X point in the future I don’t want to live anymore?)
I don’t see why doctors actually have to carry out euthenasia. In many cases the person themselves could do it – giving them the final say.
It could be argued that the moral difference between euthenasia and suicide is that euthenasia is thought through in a rational way, with other people checking that the person is of sound mind, while suicide is not. I’m not personally 100% on this though – I think its up for debate.
The NHS was been founded on the lie that there is always enough resources to treat everyones illness. Simply, there never has been the money to do this, and someone has to make a decision about who to treat and who not to treat.
I think these decisions also need to be made out in the open – in terms of the general policy outline. I actually trust the general public to be grown up enough to understand the issues and be able to have a good discussion about it.
For example, I think that people seem to be OK with the idea that overweight smokers in need of a heart transplant should get one on the condition that they lose weight and quit smoking.
I don’t actually think that paliative care workers would be out of work if euthenasia was possible, there’s just too many people for them to take care of!
As for data about medically assisted death – I’m not an expert or anything, but it seems that people from the UK have been heading to Switzerland – have you looked at what the situation is over there, Lisa?
There is a place where none of us dare look or dwell upon for any length of time, the road to death’s domain. But there are those, who of necessity, come across it on a daily basis and have to act rationally with control and in the best interests of the dying patient and their relatives.
Health care professionals do a wonderful job in this respect helped along by Marie Curie and procedures like the Liverpool integrated care pathway.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1124925
What I don’t see within the NHS though is a proactive approach to the health and well being of health care professionals who are traumatised by bad deaths something that can affect the professional’s close relatives too.
It is not dissimilar to the military one where to own up to being distressed is regarded as weakness. If a death is regarded as being a bad one then can we please automatically put in place counselling for posttraumatic stress disorder and not allow it as an option?