Assisted dying and coercion

[ArabellaScott]

This is live right now, so I'm not sure how well linking to it will work. Copy-pasting below, aswell.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cy5k0qyled2t

'Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor, opts to answer a question about coercion and whether some MPs are right to feel concerned about this when considering the bill. (Earlier, MPs heard how medical and clinic staff are trained in safeguarding, though a retired GP acknowledged coercion was hard to spot.)
Clarke says she'd "strongly push back" on the suggestion coercion is something all medical staff are trained in spotting.
"I'm the kind of doctor who believes there is nothing to be gained by sugar-coating reality...about shortcomings, failings, areas where my profession the rest of the NHS are getting things wrong", she tells MPs.
"It is my clinical experience that not only are the majority of doctors not necessarily trained in spotting coercion explicitly, they're often not trained explicitly in having so-called advanced care planning conversations with patients around the topic of death and dying."'

The guardrails and governance are becoming more and more light touch to the point of being scarcely there.

I’m now wholly opposed.

larklane

We've seen this before - any attempts to safeguard bad things happening are assumed to be 'bad faith'.

It's scary how quickly and effectively this undermines the very idea of safeguarding.

Hope it goes okay.

Thanks for your kind thoughts, it went well!
A competent older woman turned up for the assessment and spent a very long time going through everything. She even asked me how I preferred to be addressed! No patronising or talking down, helpful but not pushy. She was excellent. Phew!

That's great.

Sometimes I dream of a world run by competent older women!

It's difficult not to wonder if they have some nefarious agenda.

Because could they really be so stupid as to think a "righteous" cause can never go really wrong?

The answer is probably yes, they can be that stupid, but they should be nowhere near an MPs seat if so.

Thanks for all these discussions. A few weeks ago I was walking in to a motorway service station behind an older man (Dad?) and a younger one (Son?). The older man stumbled on a step and grumbled something and the younger caught his arm laughing and said “don’t worry, assisted dying isn’t legal just yet!”…..in a joking sort of way.
That’s the start, isn’t it, of a casual shift…which becomes a push, an expectation? I know families can share fairly dark humour, but just felt chilled and can’t forget it. Just read today’s BBC article which feels like it’s equating cost with AD in a not very subtle way. 😔

This one, Super?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62zv670m7no

Palliative care does very much need improvement.

Yes, that’s it, thank you. The headline and sub heads are all negative and even the conclusion is an “either way” question. Feels like it’s designed to push the reader into feeling unsettled and worried and setting us up for a “solution”.
My own mum died last year in a hospice, her palliative care was very caring and individual. Her pain relief was increased to such an extent her last days were peaceful but unconscious…I wondered at the time how close this was to AD, but after reading around can see it is definitely not.

I'm sorry for your loss, Super. But I'm glad your mum had good care and peaceful last days.

I've actually been surprised by the number of people who are openly willing to admit that AD is about costs ans convenience as much as anything else, even on threads like this.

There is absolutely deliberate elevation of people's fears around end of life care.

The idea that we might try and help people become comfortable with the idea that in their last days they will need assistance, that it isn't "undignified" to need help with intimate care, and this is all part of being human and the service we provide on a human basis, doesn't seem to be part of the discussion. "Care" becomes what asks as little as possible from us emotionally.

Thank you for that, Tempest, you have articulated perfectly how that article made me feel.

@SuperLemonCrush I'm so sorry for the loss of your loved one, and hope that you are in better days.
TempestTost You say it well. My feelings also.

No, assisted dying means you take the meds yourself. What happens if you stop half way through?

edited because I quoted the wrong post, apologies

Not fact checked this but this list is apparently all the ammendments rejected in discussion about the AD Bill.

Sorry hard to read. If I come across a text version will post.

Grim.

As ever, I suppose it will take actual examples of harm done before any of the 13 people making this law realise what the fuck they've done. If they ever do.

The last one I just cant understand anyone rejecting it.

to paraphrase someone whose mentally capacity, or lack of, cant seek assisted dying.

If that is the case how can anyone claim they are then seeking assisted dying.

That list of proposed amendments seem so reasonable when you look at each of them. If passed, any one of them would serve to strengthen the legislation not weaken it.

And yet, looking at how the voting went, each one is voted down by a committee that is clearly loaded against any reasonable interventions.

When you look at them as set out in IwantToRetire's post It's right to be concerned about the haste in which this is being pushed forward.

For instance, why oppose:
A first discussion being entered into the patient's notes and record?

Patient with autism or learning disabilities being given extra support?

It's very disturbing reading indeed.

More and more it is changing from a positive choice for assisted dying by a person who has their full faculties and understands that they have no more than six months to live to a "you are a bit fucked up, you won't live much longer, you are kind of in the way and wouldn't it just be easier if you agreed to be offed'.

I think this is a report of the meeting that considered the amendments.

If anyone has time to look through.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-03-05/debates/c5473281-e122-49d1-97ab-b091a2c7d695/TerminallyIllAdults(EndOfLife)Bill(EighteenthSitting)

Sorry if it is the wrong one, too late and too tired for me to make sense of.

Thanks IwantToRetire I'll read through it later this morning. I've downloaded something in PDF which is possibly the same document so will check them through.

Chairs:Peter Dowd, Clive Efford, Sir Roger Gale, Carolyn Harris,

Esther McVey - well we all know how much she loves the sick and disabled from her previous roles.

Peter Dowd - I remember him well from when he was a councillor in Merseyside. He was on the Fire Authority back then, and consistently voted for cuts in the Service.

A vain, self important, self seeking Labour Party attack dog. If The Party needed someone to bark, you just had to tell him where, and for how long.
He didn't get where he is today by having a conscience.

As you can tell. I haven't got far.

Can't recall if this was shared or not. Hadley Freeman on the AD bill wrt anorexia:

https://archive.ph/LoWuM

'Anorexics are already gaining access to assisted death in Colorado, California and Oregon. One consultant said she could foresee a time when “20 to 30 patients with anorexia access assisted dying in this country every year, because of the contagion effect”.
Given girls are developing the illness at an increasingly young age, and with increasing severity, it was vital these loopholes were closed. But as one person who has been in the committee room told me, “there is a frenzied energy, almost a religious fervour” from some MPs to jam this bill through.'