Dying with "Dignity"

The tragic death of Dr. Anne Turner in a Swiss suicide clinic does not change the grim fact that she was fighting not for the right to die (suicide was decriminalised in 1961) but for the right to be killed.

In a society increasingly willing to give up the responsibility to care, in which disability benefits are portrayed as a cover for laziness and fraud, and medicine is being withheld on the grounds of costs, this must be the most dangerous right of all.

Moreover, if this death has demonstrated that it is better to die before you become incapacitated, then it has set a most dangerous precedent; most of us will experience some sort of incapacity in the normal course - it is called getting old. For those of us who are disabled and chronically sick, as well as the elderly, euthanasia is not the same as dying with dignity - what could be more humiliating than someone agreeing with your fear that your life is worthless?

Ann Farmer
(020 8505 6002)