Assisted dying bill (TW assisted suicide discussion)

For those saying that you have the right to commit suicide - the difficulty is doing that safely, reliably and painlessly in a way that doesn't cause trauma to your family.

That isn't easy to achieve - it's made deliberately difficult to achieve so that people can't make that decision on a bad day, or a bad week and then not live to regret it.

So how do we make suicide accessible to those who want to commit suicide without making it accessible to those who are suffering from depression but who, as a society, we generally believe will and should have the opportunity to recover, rather than being able to make that decision at a rash moment?

For people making the comparison between humans and animals, there is no comparison.

Yes, we have the ability to have an animal put to sleep in the case of suffering or long-term illness.

But people also routinely have animals put to sleep if they e.g. can’t afford a treatment for a condition. My cat has recently cost me £4000 for a treatment which is relatively new and therefore expensive. But the vet said most people still choose to put the animal to sleep because they can’t afford it.

If a dog bites we are advised to have it put to sleep.

People take their dogs to have them put to sleep if they no longer want them.

And this one of the reasons why the veterinary profession has one of the highest suicide rates.

This law is being proposed precisely so that in future it will make it easier to kill off the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless, where shall we draw the line at who we can kill?

Because let’s be honest, if the law goes through as it is strictly being proposed, there are very few people who will actually be eligible vs those who feel they should be. And so it’s only a matter of time until there is a further amendment, with cries of “you wouldn’t let a cancer sufferer go through this, so why someone with <insert illness>”

I feel exactly the same as you, for the reasons you've stated.

I'm so sorry about your mum.

I've felt this way for many years. I have had many cats and dogs euthanised over the years and have always felt it's so wrong that the same dignity isn't afforded to humans.

I absolutely oppose it. People will feel guilty and under pressure to end the suffering for their relatives' sakes if not their own.

Good quality end of life care is what is needed. We probably all have experience of losing loved ones which is not pleasant but excellent pain relief and hospice care should be the focus from Government not this.

Also, tbh most people have access to massive amounts of opiates in the final few months anyway.

Very conflicted.
From here and other sources I hear about the incredible pain and suffering endured in the final stages of life. Also for those knowing that it is the last few months.
If there are doctors and judges who agree who am I to say no. Why should two people suffering experience different end because one is rich and can afford Dignitas?

However I don’t trust any government to invest in palliative care so there is a genuine choice.

The time between the doctors and court and the death seems to be designed to be short which means an advance directive would not work. To avoid the suffering you would have to be assisted in the early stages of the 6 months. There might be a postcode lottery of doctor and court time leading to suffering of the paperwork

If I wanted this for myself it would probably be in the case of dementia and the law would not help. If I write something up now when I have full capacity and hope that then law changes how does someone decide when is the “right” time?

I have also got a physical disability so in the case of cancer when the law should help I might not be able to physically take the drug if only my right side was working (it doesn’t work properly so likely they would have used every part of my good left side to treat.) Yet it would be a slippery slope to help me with the last bit of inserting the syringe or pushing the button.

I have depression - does that mean I will automatically not have capacity in relation to a decision about death due to my cancer? Lots of people develop depression due to cancer or other illnesses that would otherwise qualify- what happens then?

I am totally against this.

There will be coercion. 100%. Whether that is money grabbing relatives, relatives thinking they are doing the right thing - ie they would want an assisted death so granny must want one too and convince them or people not wanting to be a burden, don't want to waste inheritance. Also drs offering it makes it sound like it is recommended, people trust drs. There will be coercion.

I also think it's a slippery slope. Today it's people with terminal illness who choose this. Tomorrow the nhs has no money so people with terminal illnesses are forced down this path because it's much cheaper than other palliative care options.

i am against it because it is the slippery slope to eugenics.

There was another thread about this recently, and posters were saying thing like “baby steps”, and “by the time my time comes the law will have been amended to allow for/or extended.” So it is blatantly obvious that even the public who approve want this to be the start of a slippery slope.

People talk about dementia, about how it will be a way out for those people, when actually it won’t. Because you have to have capacity, which someone with dementia doesn’t have. But people won’t let it drop there. They will want it to be like countries like Belgium and the Netherlands where patients with dementia are physically restrained in order to kill them due to an advance directive. And that, IMO, is murder. If a woman consents to sex one night, then goes out and gets drunk, and the man she is with has sex with her even if she says no, we confirm that he raped her, because she didn’t have the capacity to consent at the time. Therefore someone who consents to be euthanised at a particular point doesn’t have the capacity to consent when the time comes, and as such, holding them down to perform the act is murder. IMO.

Everyone has the right to commit suicide if they want to end their life. At best the law can be changed in order to absolve relatives who travel abroad with someone to end their lives. But that’s as far as it should go.

@Errors I agree. Cancer runs ragged through my family and I've seen too many relatives have rubbish, drawn out deaths. Older people hate being a burden, and my relatives would cry and tell their caregivers "For heaven sake, end it now", but of course they couldn't. If my relatives said, I want to be let go, and they could do that with repercussions, I think they might have seriously considered it.

Choice is the word here. You should be able to choose to end it early, or choose not to.

The key here is how much room for coercion might there be. That's the thing that worries me. And I don't want to our country to end up like Canada.

But the basic principle of allowing two doctors to agree that assisted dying is a reasonable choice for a terminally ill person, I am in favour of.

Sadly, I don't think there's been enough debate about this Bill in this country, and I think it will not pass, like all other attempts before it.

A nurse you say? So all these people living in pain and agony for months if not years waiting on the inevitable are invisible to you? So please tell me, a 52 year old given 12 months or so to live after 2 years of chemo/radio/immuno and all the side effects that go with it including double nephrostomys due to kidney problem caused by ‘treatment’, not to mention the hip fracture they aren’t going to do anything with because pretty much it’s a waste of their time and money how good my death is going to be? Not to mention why it is anyone else’s decision rather than mine? The pain I’m in mentally and physically just waiting to die is almost unbearable. It’s so bad I’ve already signed a DNR in the event that a welcomed heart attack might happen. My choice!

I support it. I think people should be given the choice. Just because some people have experiences of family members wanting to live to the very end (which I completely understand) doesn’t mean that everyone will feel that way. It will be a choice not a full blown conclusion. If the patient wants to stay around until the very end, those wishes must be respected. But if they don’t want to suffer any longer, or controversially if they don’t want to be a burden on their families then they should have the right to choose.

Perhaps we need a wider conversation about death and dying. It's not really something that we experience often anymore, it's not talked about or is discussed in euphemisms such as 'passing on'. Maybe we need to feel more comfortable and less afraid of it.

I agree but I don’t think the answer is to sanitise it, which is what assisted dying is about. Maybe we need to get more comfortable and be less afraid of the reality of death.

I dont want to see any coercion, I do think the safeguards need to be carefully drafted

I'd agree with this, @anyolddinosaur, if it wasn't for the fact that what's laid down in bills and "safeguarding" and what happens in practice are too often very different things

Add to that financial pressures and a lack of accountability among those who'd instantly seek to wash their hands of any problems and there's a potential storm in the making, no matter how persuasive the initial principle

I agree with assisted dying when the person is medically eligible, makes the choice and can administer whatever is needed independently. I think my dad would have chosen this in the end stages of his COPD.

But, I also worry about it the wellbeing of anyone whose job it would be to "kill" a person who cannot administer themselves.

It is such a difficult topic.

EOL and palliative care needs to be addressed, the provision is patchy and poor in my experience. Even if it were gold standard though, it doesn't get away from the fact that pain killers do not remove all pain in serious illnesses.

I don't know what the answer is. Definitely improved care is needed. I'm not sure if there an incentive for Pharma companies to find better pain relief.

I've watched two family members die, one in a coma on a morphine pump and the other just on oramorph. I try not to think about it tbh as it still upsets me nearly ten years on. It's not about the ones that get left behind though is it? I can say though, that it's not how I would want to die.

My remaining parent has a life limiting illness, they've talked to me about smothering them with a pillow and the one that died, wanted me to give them a morphine OD (I wouldn't and I didn’t). That's not right either is it? Someone should feel they have to ask their child to do this as there is no alternative.

I also had a family friend go to Dignitas when their Parkinson's became too much for them.

Perhaps we need a wider conversation about death and dying. It's not really something that we experience often anymore, it's not talked about or is discussed in euphemisms such as 'passing on'. Maybe we need to feel more comfortable and less afraid of it.

there are issues in Oregon, it's easier to talk about Canada in some ways but oregon have had issues with

1. doctor shopping....if you look hard enough someone will sign you up
2. people with depressionand psychiatric disability eg Michael Freeland.
3. economic pressure and coercion (especially acute if private healthcare in USA taken into account) eg Linda Fleming/Thos Middleton
4. implicating others (eg disabled person unable to take meds himself so his relative administered) Patrick Matheny
5. legal erosion and changes in expected levels of conduct (Melcher, Avery and others). 6 ) medical complications/inefficacy taking lethal drugs by mouth is often ineffective in causing a quick and simple death. eg David Pruitt
6. Jeanette Hall of Oregon was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and told she had six months to a year to live. She knew about the assisted suicide law, and asked her doctor about it, because she didn’t want to suffer. Her doctor encouraged her not to give up, and she decided to fight the disease. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation. Eleven years later, she wrote, “I am so happy to be alive! If my doctor had believed in assisted suicide, I would be dead. … Assisted suicide should not be legal.Unfortunately, not all doctors are like Jeanette Hall’s.

This has been discussed extensively on mumsnet previously and the opponents will try to talk it to death. Yes I can see why they think like that but no safeguards would ever satisfy them. It's a cruel point of view that wants to see people suffer.

Most people (73% according to yougov) support it and apparently it's higher in those who have watched a parent die recently.

I've watched a number of people die in situations where a vet would put an animal to sleep without hesitation.

I dont want to see any coercion, I do think the safeguards need to be carefully drafted. I'm eternally grateful to the doctor who asked if we wanted one cancer sufferer (who was by then incapable of expressing a view themself) to have adequate pain relief even if it would shorten their life. Nowadays some busybody opposed to assisted dying would kick up a stink and he would be more reluctant to ask.

When we say that needing help for personal care and to perform bodily functions is undignified, what does that say about how we regard disabled people who need this help? I think the concept of ‘dignity’ needs to be rethought in the U.K. I think British concepts of privacy, propriety, the stiff upper lip don’t help.

*Stickytreacle · Today 14:53

I absolutely support the bill, and I resent the fact that objectors are denying my human right of choice.

No one is stopping you or anyone else from committing suicide. You can argue that if you want to die, anyone who helps you, like a relative or friend, should not be subject to criminal prosecution but where do you get the idea that it is a human right (or should be) for you to demand that a medical professional kills you at your request?

Medical professionals are not robots who do whatever the patient wants. They have a certain ethos, a defined area of practice and this bill seeks to fundamentally change that. So the views of clinicians is very relevant.

I would personally leave the medical and nursing professions out of this completely and create an entirely new profession of Licenced Death Practitioners, regulated by the Health Professionals Council. Unfortunately this
won’t happen.

For example it’s been 1997 for the state of Oregon it’s still limited to PAS for people with a terminal illness who have less than six months to live. Maybe that slope isn’t quite so slippery?

It’s pretty polarising, I personally am in favour. I’m not keen on a long drawn out end but would respect the choices of those who want to hang on till the die naturally. I have Dutch family I think they are more pragmatic about death. Even with the family people make different decisions, my great aunt lasted well into her 90s and she died naturally. She did suffer a lot with pain/ various illnesses for last decade. Her sister opted for PAS when diagnosed with lung cancer in her 70s. It wasn’t awful we had lots of last moments and reminiscing then when she was ready the doctor came to the house with the drugs / instructions then left.

Amendments can't be "tabled" to legislation which has already been passed. That's not how it works at all.

I absolutely support the bill, and I resent the fact that objectors are denying my human right of choice. Of course strong safeguards need to be in place, but should I make the decision to prevent suffering for myself I don't expect another's religious beliefs to prevent me from self administering a lethal dose. It's all well and good saying we need better palliative care, which we do, but palliative can often be unsuccessful at relieving pain and suffering.

Agree. My mother was told "Weeks, not months" and lived a further 9 months. She fought to live with every breath she took.

My biggest fears about this bill are realised in looking at other countries like Canada and Holland, where lobbying has systematically brought in other 'categories' of people.

It's pointless to say "There will be strict safeguards" because once the bill is passed, amendments can be tabled at any time - which is precisely what has happened in this countries cited. Holland now allows assisted suicide for perfectly health 75 year olds who "feel their lives are complete". It takes a nanosecond to work out who might encourage that category.