Friday, March 20, 2009
O, Patricia, Where is Thy Sting?
In my right ear Patricia Hewitt is talking about assisted suicide or 'assisted death' as we now seem to call it. I have to say she makes it sound very attractive.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Presumably the attractive bit would be assisting her.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that it is always spoken about as the Right to Die - something that none of us are going to be denied - rather than what it actually is: giving someone else the legal Right to Kill.
Suicide is truly a permanent solution to a temporary problem, plus its the cowards way out. William Henley the British poet said it best in Invictus.
ReplyDeleteI feel I've learned a lot about this area from Dr Rob George, someone who has testified to the House of Lords on the subject and likewise speaks on the media regularly. Rob has specialised in care for the dying for many years. Exactly this time last year I told him some symptoms and he warned me that it sounded as if my Dad was on the way out very much quicker than the three months he'd just been given by the oncologist at Guy's. So I went down to the old man's house the next morning and spent what turned out to be the whole of his last day on the planet by his side, not at my computer. So I trust Rob quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteThe point that has stuck with me on 'right to die' is not just as Recusant says that it sets up a 'right to kill', which could pander to the latent Harold Shipman among us. It also in the end sets up a 'duty to kill' - completely changing the relationship between patient and carer. The patient doesn't have the physical or mental strength to kill him/herself so they outsource that to a doctor - and through legislation it could become the duty of the doctor (or at least a nearby doctor) to comply. The guilt associated with this, after the act has been completed, is not going to be with the dead person but with the one left alive. Not a good place. Bad idea.
I have sat many long hours with an elderly terminal cancer patient in tremendous pain and suffering who begged for death to come sooner, rather than his ability to care for himself to any extent. I begged him not to talk that way, but I understood and suffered every moment with him.
ReplyDeleteI understand the argument on both sides. The true cowards are those who could not sit there every hour with us!
I'm kind of agnostic- though if pushed I'd go with Hewitt. I've heard cancer pain is the worst of all with your insides feeling like burning coals that not even heroin can numb.
ReplyDeleteOf course we need to have strict rules but I don't think Britain's doctors will all turn into Harold Shipman either. As ever though, the Daily Mail's apocalyptic fury will probably prevent any government from implementing this.
Chris, you say you don't think all Britain's doctors will turn into Harold Shipman. I don't think anyone thinks they will. The question is: what percentage of Harold Shipmans is acceptable to you? And what kind of social contract between doctor and patient, of which formal legislation is just a part, is more likely to encourage their development?
ReplyDeleteIf a patient in extreme pain asks for their life to be terminated, and their is a doctor willing to do it, then that could be legitimate. Any doctor, who is not willing to carry it out, wouldn't have to. If it turned out their were no doctors willing, then it would have to be abandoned.
ReplyDeleteI know this is an ethical and philosophical minefield so rules would need to be strict with regards people who are not in extreme pain or despair due to catastrophic physical injuries. It would have to be the patient's instigation, not the doctor's. It's wicked that someone in that level of suffering has no control over her life. Not everyone will feel that level of guilt that you talk about purely because it's an act of compassion. We can't bare to see animals suffering but don't offer humans the same. We seem to have built up a resistance to human suffering, so we pretend it doesn't exist, isn't that bad, or just needs more pain relief.
Chris, there's no way to legislate to avoid all suffering. There's no way to legislate even to prevent some people experiencing massive suffering at the end of their lives. I assume for example that happens every day of the year on our roads. People die, some in terrible agony. Life is like that. A few hard cases in hospital wards do not good laws make. The compassion you rightly talk of should be focused rather on providing much better palliative care - because I am assured by experts like Rob and the nurse in charge of care of the dying at Guy's and Thomas's that we could do much better, across the country, in reducing the pain levels people experience in their journey through to death. That's where our focus should be I believe. But people of genuine compassion can of course differ on the exact details. Let's hope we each meet such extremity bravely, if that's how the end comes, and with grace to spare for those around us.
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