I have been rather engrossed this month with writing commitments, hence the light blogging. It is not as if there have not been significance issues occupying the front pages. One of them is the Nicklinson case. Tony Nicklinson is the man paralysed from the neck down, who sees his life as a ‘living nightmare’ – he communicates only by blinking – and went to court in pursuit of his wish to be allowed to die. This takes us beyond the usual discussion over assisted dying in that he would be dependent entirely on someone else to bring his life to an end. The court found against him, Lord Justice Toulson making clear that “It is not for the court to decide whether the law about assisted dying should be changed and, if so, what safeguards should be put in place.”
In short, it is a matter for Parliament. There is public support for changing the law to allow for assisted dying, subject to appropriate safeguards. However, there are those who object on principle, believing it wrong that anyone should facilitate the ending of life, and those who argue that in practical terms it is near impossible to craft adequate safeguards to protect against exploitation of the vulnerable. Those who oppose changing the law are fairly well entrenched in Parliament, so changing the law is difficult. That, though, is not an argument against trying.
Obviously, if one has a principled objection, one is not going to be persuaded of the case for changing the law. I do not have a principled objection, nor am I necessarily persuaded of the practical arguments. I do not believe it is impossible to craft adequate safeguards, though I accept the challenge is for supporters of a change in the law to prove this to be the case. A number of points advanced in debate, such as the improvements in palliative care, are not conclusive arguments against changing the law, given that palliative care is not going to be relevant in all cases (including this particular case). If those who favour a change in the law are able to come forward with a clearly defined measure, incorporating demonstrably robust safeguards, then – unless I hear any compelling arguments to the contrary that have not yet been advanced – I will support it. I certainly think we cannot duck the matter. Far too much is left to the courts and, as the judges keep reminding us, they interpret and apply the law as passed by Parliament.
It is strange that we think nothing of taking an animal to the vet to be put down when it is deemed to be suffering enough that it is the only humane action. Indeed, one is liable to be prosecuted for cruelty for not taking the animal on its last trip to the vet.
In principle it should therefore be possible for a person in command of his mental faculties to choose to have his own life brought to an end, although the corollary to that is that no one should be compelled to assist in the process (one assumes that there would be only a small number of requests each year and so finding someone prepared to assist should not be impossible).
Obviously a lot of safeguards are needed, and I wouldn’t expect it to be a quick or easy procedure, but there are no practical reasons why it couldn’t be done.
The court’s ruling was correct, of course. It is for Parliament to make the law.
It’s clear to me that the law needs to change. Mr Nicklinson is an intelligent man who is able to express his precise views with the aid of a computer. In that respect, he can’t be classified as “vulnerable”. In fact, I would say that people who force Mr Nicklinson to live against his will are guilty of abusing him, of taking advantage of his vulnerability – which is physical rather than mental – simply to force their own views on others.
Many people commit suicide perfectly legally for far lesser reasons than Mr Nicklinson. Why should he be denied that right just because he is unable to use his limbs? As he is able to communicate, no-one would actually have to kill him. A doctor would need to attach a drip to his arm, but he could instruct his computer to deliver the drugs himself – or not to if he changed his mind at the last minute.
As with the issue of gay marriage, many people who oppose this do so simply because they are entrenched in their so-called religious views. Most of the arguments against changing the law, even if seemingly well-formed, are just a smokescreen used by a vocal minority who are determined to force their irrational views upon everyone else at any cost.
There is public support for changing the law to allow for assisted dying, subject to appropriate safeguards.
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Like the existing safeguards which are non existent.
e.g. Bump off your errors with morphine without getting any other doctors involved.
600 plus bumped off by Shipman in that way, and there aren’t checks on doctors doing likewise.
I am curious though as to why are the side supporting the current legal situation is demanding a level of prevention of abuse that is so high that it wouldn’t be required in any other law?
No law can be absolutely perfect, and no society is either. I will state openly and clearly that there will be people pressured into early deaths.
It will happen. They will be murdered.
It probably happens already with unassisted suicides – and we have laws in place already to deal with such heinous situations.
The question is what to do to minimise, not abolish such abuses. You can’t abolish them, so lets not pretend that we can.
The law isn’t there to prevent things happening, but to discourage them and lay out the social code by which we live, then determine the punishment that will be meted out if the law is broken.
The notion that we cannot pass a law because it might be broken is a bizarre one, yet it is the key argument put forward by those who oppose a change in the law to permit assisted suicide.
We need sensible safeguards to help minimise abuse, but equally those safeguards shouldn’t be so onerous as to put the applicant in long term suffering.
I wont put forward suggestions for such safeguards, although I have views on it – I just ask that we drop this odd notion that it is impossible to change the law until you have also abolished all options for it to be broken.
It is not for the court to decide whether the law about assisted dying should be changed and, if so, what safeguards should be put in place.”
In short, it is a matter for Parliament.
I don’t see why. Perhaps only because the gentleman in question is interested in Legal procedures, or one of his carers is, with respect.
A good many people starve to death, particularly at the end of their lives.
They do not want to go on eating and drinking, so they stop doing it.
The instinct for self preservation has its limits, and they should be found by nature, not be legal procedure.
Starving to death is not that difficult.
If he can express the wish not to be fed, and it is understood that is his wish, then his carers must respect that decision.
As one particularly intelligent MP said a few years back.
“It is a pity that laws are for everybody!” I am sorry to observe the noble lord making the same mistake! They are.
Such cases must be taken on a case by case basis, if necessary.
In some cases, the hospital denies them water. They then phone reception, and the nurse confiscates the phone, sends doctors away, letting the patient die.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261457/Dying-hospital-patient-phoned-switchboard-begging-drink-nurses-said-No.html
Endemic in the NHS.
I saw how devastated that poor man was and I can only wonder why it is that people can be so cruel and let him go on suffering in that way. We put animals out of their misery when they are in pain. It’s clearly his choice and no one else’s. If a person is capable of asking to be put out of their misery then I see no reason why they shouldn’t be in a caring and calm environment. I would expect nothing less if I was in the same position.
The real problem is that doctors are currently bumping lots of people off without any checks.
In addition they are killing tens of thousands a year by their errors.
You don’t see many prosecutions for murder or for manslaughter. It’s covered up.
This man who pleads to die is being used by the lets call it ‘euthanasia’ group when the medical professionals kill their patient by accident or intention.
This little list tells only half of it as it is.
http://www.claims-medneg.co.uk/news.html
When was the last time you saw nurses who deny food, water and care, charged with murder. And you know when you read it, you realise the death was a form of hate crime. Hatred of the elderly or sick. Care is a word used for abuse in a great deal of British hospital wards today.
So, the way to reduce the medical fear is give them the euthanasia get out ploy. That is in case the family bring a lawyer into the fray to make sure they will never face a murder charge or even be struck off. Especially if they come from abroad to work for a weekend stint, akin to the guy from Germany, who was, literally, unfit for purpose.
Now why do you think that is?
And as an earlier poster wrote, medics have for centuries been helping a patient to die when the end is nigh. By, the administering of heavy pain killers. This little proposal is a farce and is to enable killing of those not close to death but who cost the State money when they are sick.
If you are unable to work, look out.
Remember the young guy with a brain tumour in hospital whom the nursing staff starved to death, deliberately, and somehow managed to get off with it. No charges brought. He was 22 years old. The doctors in the question are equally responsible for they see the patient being uncared for and turn a blind eye. I tell you, we are being led up the garden path with this. As the saying goes, buyer beware.
Keep watch as this will become as prolific as abortion. And the loud claim will be those who oppose have absurd religious beliefs. It’s all the fault of the Church. Haven’t we heard that before somewhere?
Which means, if you don’t want to die, its because you believe in God. LOL.
Quite Maude. On this I’m with you 100%.
Look at the recent pronouncements. 6,000 killed a year because they can’t read basic charts or standardize on them.
Surely that’s a totally different issue. This has nothing to do with medical incompetence or illegal practices. It’s about a small number of people who want to choose to end their lives.
One could take the opposite view. Given that there is already the much larger issue you highlight of thousands of patients dying, why deny the right to end their lives to the very small number of mentally competent people who choose to do that? Stop wasting time discussing the small number of cases of people making a free choice, and tackle the larger and more serious problem.
The case of Dr Death, the Manchester doctor who gave early death to quite a few people with
the syringe, was said to be the conscience of the medical profession.
If you die of old age, you do quite often do the choosing of the precise timing of it.
The doctor uses syringe and morphine derivatives(heroine?), and once you have accepted his syringe, the end is near, partly through dependency on him.
The tragedy is the young people who are persuaded to accept Heroine as pain killer
for their own lives, in their own way, on the basis that it is some kind of fun.
The ultimate pain relief, is death.
Kill the patiet to cure the disease.
How does a doctor quantify ‘pain’ in an old person, and a surgeon how to provide theatre surgery to relieve it, known as ‘terminal surgery’?
It seems from the comments that those who are opposed to assisted suicide are trying to muddy the waters by introducing the entirely separate issue of medical/nursing negligence. The difference is pretty simple: Tony Nicklinson has said repeatedly that he wants to end his life; those who are victims of neglect in hospitals have not.
Of course there must be safeguards, but the core ethical issue is whether it is right for one group of people knowingly to cause suffering for other people because of personal beliefs (religious or otherwise, overt or not) that are not shared by their victims.
Tony Nicklinson is suffering greatly. There is no end to it. To deny him the means – which are readily available – to a dignified and pain-free end at a time of his choosing is no different in principle from condoning torture.
We should of course respect the right of people to believe, for example, in the inviolability of God-given life from conception to natural death, regardless of the suffering involved. They should be supported if they wish to apply that belief to themselves. But they have no right whatsoever to impose the consequences of such a belief on those who reject it.
It’s because they are intertwined.
Given the track record of the NHS killing off patients without controls, why should we trust them if we introduce controls for special cases?
Who are you suggesting should be the controller? Ian Brady perhaps.
ie. What you aren’t doing is considering the side effects of that policy. Namely legitimising murder by workers in the NHS.
the side effects of that policy. Namely legitimising murder by workers in the NHS. Lord Blagger surely has more knowledge of geriatric medicine than that!
The age of Mr Nicklinson can be the only fact keeping him alive, that his carers, not knowing of the methods of geriatric surgeons at the point of most people’s death,(and Blagger says he does not either) do not know what NOT to do.
He may have half a dozen carers during the course of the week. It takes three or more days for somebody to die of thirst, so while he has a different carer looking after him every few hours, he will not die of starvation or thirst, fed by tube.
It is not the responsibility of the courts or of the legislature to make or apply laws in such instances. It is the responsibility of the carers, and they must act accordingly,
all of them together.
Who are you suggesting should be the controller? Ian Brady perhaps.
They were too young; he didn’t ask; a whole list of things.
Namely legitimising murder by workers in the NHS.
It is surprising what surgeons can do without being charged with murder.
200 years ago, before the scientific use of anaesthetics, many, if not all, of the tasks now done by the terminal surgeon, were done at home by relatives, probably with bottles of spirits.
200 years ago, if an op was botched, the surgeon was run out of the village, certainly without pay, and possibly without the seat of his pants, and other things beside.
Today he gets paid, botched op or not.
It is true it’s difficult to botch the operation of death, although with a bottle of spirits it was easier… to botch.
No-one’s suggesting killing patients would be the norm, or something that junior staff could decide to do when they felt like it. I would only envisage a small number of cases, and there would have to be a process. How about: the patient would have to have expressed a clear wish to die, and would need to be assessed by, say, three senior, independent doctors who had nothing to do with his care. I would also be happy for there to be some sort of legal hearing in court.
If you still weren’t satisfied after such a process, then you evidently can’t trust any aspect of our justice system, or anyone in the medical profession, and you may as well go and live somewhere else…
No-one’s suggesting killing patients would be the norm, or something that junior staff could decide to do when they felt like it. I would only envisage a small number of cases, and there would have to be a process.
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The problem is killing patients IS the norm. NOW.
6,000 killed a year because they haven’t standardised on charts.
@Jeremy Rodell:
This gentleman could have received help by his medical staff long ago, with pain killers, as mentioned above. He is being used as a means to change a law that is not in anybodies best interests to change.
It does not need a new law and I feel you must know that. If you do not, then you are not well advised.
Unfortunately there is a need. Not for new laws, but for existing laws on murder and manslaughter to be enforced.
Pain killers? Have you actually followed this case at all? It’s true some people who want to die wish so because they are in terrible pain. In the case of Tony Nicklinson, he wasn’t in pain, he simply didn’t want to live a life where he was trapped in a completely paralysed body. What sort of painkillers do you propose for people in a similar situation?
And whether or not a particular patient can be helped through medicine, that’s not what some people want. However, they are denied their free choice by people like you.
@Jonathan:
It is not me that is denying people in this deceased gentleman’s position from dying, it is people like you, and whoever he had backing him, who want to create a situation in this country where people like me and my family can legally be put to death by medics with nothing more than a tale that they pleaded to die.
And if you feel that is a good enough reason for another person to be required to take the life of a human being, then you are a very sad case.
Secondly, your claim is this man had no pain, therefore he could not have morphine, et al, administered. Well, if I were in your so called ‘no pain’ in his situation, in which his pain in life was tremendous, my pain would become physically intolerable should I truly seek deliverance from this life.
Your argument is infantile.
This takes us beyond the usual discussion over assisted dying in that he would be dependent entirely on someone else to bring his life to an end.
If he is fed by feeding tube and has a rota of carers who change every 8 hours or so, he would have become, in a small way, “institutionalised” in that no one person would be able to take responsibility for his death, and there would be apportionable blame if he did.
He may have thought in the first place that his condition would improve.
It is unfortunate, a living death.
His carers have got to get round and make a joined up decision. Take a vote.
The Courts say it is is not their repsonbility. It’s not. It is theirs.
If you made a law you would get any number of people quoting the law and getting in to that situation just so’s they could have the law decide! Not good!
There are times when the natural rights of the individual come in to play.
That time has long gone by, for the individual in question.
His carers are denying him his natural rights, alone.
Unfortunately Tony Nicklinson has just died.
Dear Lord Norton,
Life is a blessing from heaven and pleading in favour of a law allowing people to be assisted to die, is against moral and religious issues . Where there is life, there is hope, and hopefully with the expectations of scientists, many hopeless cases for instance uncurable or handicaped diseases will be cured.It is just a question of time and financial means to help those researchers to carry out their research work properly.
A law proposing additional budget for researchers would be a more appropriate solution than allowing hopeless cases to die for the sake of lightening the burden of a given society.
Hopeless depressed cases patients should be assisted psychologically and proper additional medical homes should be constructed to make them feel alive so that they might not ask for an assisted death.
Such a law would be in total contradiction with criminal law which stipulates that no one is allowed to give death to any one.So this assistance to death is a violation to the law itself and I wish that the bar council will stand against such a law.
Please dear Lord, in the name of moral, spiritual and legal issues, I hope that no such law is proposed by the Lords.I strongly think that lords would choose to give life to life rather than life to death as life is for once only.
God save the Queen and the Lords. God bless the United Kingdom.
Nazma FOURRE