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FROM:
DR. RICHARD LAMERTON
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
HOSPICE OF THE VALLEYS, SOUTH
WALES
If you give someone rights, it means
someone else has a duty. A right to die means someone has a duty
to kill. If doctors do this:
- As in Holland, doctors would lose their
patients' trust.
- As the habit of killing catches on,
the voluntary element is lost. Patients in Holland are having
to carry cards saying "Please, doctor, DON'T kill me.."
- The ways open to doctors for killing
are not always effective. To be paralysed but still conscious,
or not to die as expected, are distinct risks - all drugs sometimes
fail.
When the question was being debated in
the House of Lords a doctor, knowing these limitations, asked
a Dutch doctor giving evidence "What you do when the patient
doesn't die first time?" The gruesome details in the reply
were a major factor in deciding the committee against euthanasia.
Don't be dazzled by the words "death with dignity".
What would be much kinder, quicker and surer would be a bullet
in the head. Doctors should be left out of this altogether. Policemen
could do the killings, or undertakers, or social workers.
I have considerable sympathy for Mrs. Pretty - Motor Neurone
Disease is awful. But having looked after dozens of people with
the condition, I would hate to endorse Mrs. Pretty's message
of despair. Some patients despair, but most do not. Most find
new depths in relationships, new meanings in life, and enough
reasons to go on living. But they do need skilled care - I hope
Mrs. Pretty is getting help from a good Hospice with experience
in this kind of care.
But if we make it legal to kill her, some very dangerous consequences
would follow.
- A legal definition of who could be killed
would be needed. Which lives could be considered not worth living
would need to be carefully defined. (The last Bill presented
to the House of Lords by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society had
a definition which could encompass depression, schizophrenia,
strokes, diabetes and many other conditions.)
- Anyone within the definition would begin
to feel pressure on them to get out of the way. Society would
begin to see them as a burden. They would die completely voluntarily,
of course, but not because they really felt their life was worthless.
The law as it stands is exactly right.
It is not a crime to commit suicide, but the duty upon anyone
else is to try to relieve the distress and despair which led
to it, not to kill the sufferer.
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