|
Please also see
our home page for more up-to-date information.
FROM:
DR.
RICHARD LAMERTON
MEDICAL
DIRECTOR
HOSPICE
OF THE VALLEYS, SOUTH WALES
Response to the proposed Scottish
Death with Dignity
Bill by Jeremy Purvis M.S.P.
If Mr. Purvis seriously thinks he can
legislate for death with dignity, he has a big lesson to learn
about human individuality. If we have not lived with dignity
there's no way we will die with dignity. And we probably wouldn't
care much either
What gives Mr. Purvis the idea that it
is dignified to be killed? (Or to kill?) The way to increase
the likelihood of a dignified peaceful death is to have really
good care. Actually it's a peaceful death most of us want. "Dignity"
is a bit of a red herring.
To die well, people need to prepare.
To prepare for death people need truthful and competent carers.
The knowledge of good hospice care is now widely available: it
needs to be made universally available.
People only ask to be killed because
something has driven them to it. Fear, pain or physical distress,
seeing an unsupported struggling family. To kill someone at that
point would only ensure that they died in fear and pain. Good
hospice care addresses the pain at every level - physical, emotional,
social and spiritual. In other words, bedside nursing, concerned
listening or counselling, social work looking at the whole family
needs, and healing: it is all practical.
There is no way that Mr. Purvis's killing
law could address all these needs, all this unfinished business.
Neither is there any way he could avoid abuse of the system.
Geriatricians wanting beds emptied, families eager to inherit,
patients suicidal from a treatable depression, would all make
hideous use of the new concept of a legal permission to kill.
Subtle pressure on the patient from every side.
And who would be the killers? Surely
not doctors or nurses? Who would ever trust them again? All they
would have to offer is drugs to put people down. Drugs all have
a failure rate. They could certainly not guarantee a dignified
end. It was the question "What do you do when someone is
not completely dead after your euthanasia attempt?" which
elicited such horrifying responses from Dutch euthanasia doctors
in the House of Lords that the last attempt to introduce euthanasia
in Parliament was thrown out.
No. If you are going to introduce killing
in Scottish hospitals then at least make it efficient and merciful.
"The medical profession should keep its hands clean and
have no part in it. Get a soldier in. A bullet through the head
would be much kinder.
R. Lamerton
Hospice Doctor
Specific Comments
- Mr. Purvis has misunderstood the law
on suicide, because he thinks in terms of 'rights', not duties.
Because the despairing are not deemed criminal if they kill themselves,
this does not mean a "right to kill myself" therefore
exists. Or that the "right" should therefore be extended
to those incapable of exerting it. The duty, if you find yourself
with a potentially suicidal person, is to dissuade them from
doing it, and to attempt to resuscitate them if they do try to
kill themselves. We are in dangerous territory if we cease to
treat life as a good.
- 16 year-olds are not adults, whatever
a law says.
- It is quite possible that a law of this
sort would split the medical profession permanently. It is not
enough that doctors who do not wish to kill people may opt out.
They will want to make clear to patients beforehand which view
of the medical profession they support. Inevitably two very different
medical professions will emerge.
- Would a duty be imposed on dissenting
doctors to refer the patient to another doctor who would kill
them? What of the nurses inevitably involved in the care-or-killing
option when a patient is in hospital or being visited by District
Nurses?
- Death by double effect is not illegal
or immoral. So why does anyone need to make it "transparent"
or regulated by reporting. Control freaks ride again.
- Illegal killing may well be going on.
Whenever it is suspected, the police should be involved. But
making it more transparent or regulated by reporting is hardly
a solution. We'll be asking murderers to sign a register in the
Town Hall next. This is plainly irrational - murder is always
"underground". If we could remove it we would, but
the solution is not to legalise it.
|
