If Lord Falconer’s aim (Letters, October 4) is to develop a safe and compassionate assisted dying law, he should want to understand and address the serious concerns of people like me who work with terminally ill patients every day , instead of rejecting. and who he expects to pass his legislation (I see the worrying consequences of assisted dying in other countries. The UK bill needs a radical rethink, October 2). He should also actively try to learn from what is not working well in other countries, rather than ignoring it.
Lord Falconer believes there is a fundamental difference between the feeling of suicidality and the desire for a medically assisted death. However, it is absurd to claim that just because apparently someone has a terminal illness cannot be suicidal by definition. Based on this claim, he would require doctors to treat a patient who says he wants to end his life in a radically different way. just because they have a terminal illness. This is not “person-centered” and does not represent “choice” – and has prevented serious consideration of what would justify helping someone end their life rather than trying to prevent suicide.
Lord Falconer’s repeated claim that his proposed legislation is “tried and tested” and “safe” is belied by evidence from other countries. We must explore alternative approaches to avoid repeating their mistakes.
Doctor Lucy Thomas
Palliative Care and Public Health Doctor, Hitchin, Hertfordshire
Charles Falconer’s flattery towards doctors is hypocritical. He claims that they have an important voice in dying care, but ignores uncomfortable facts. Only 2% of physicians in Canada and Oregon prescribe lethal drugs – even less in Australia. More than 98% of physicians in these jurisdictions do not want direct involvement in assisted deaths. They recognize the dangers to patients, the healthcare system and to themselves (persistent adverse personal consequences have been reported in 15%-20% of physicians involved in assisted death). Falconer would have you believe that it is safe to leave the decision to two isolated doctors who decide in secret, without any control or evaluation. This is against all good practice and seems intended to hide errors, prejudices and discrimination.
If a person in a wheelchair complained that a barrier prevented him from seeing outside, the caring solution would be to install a transparent barrier. Falconer’s solution is to remove the barrier altogether, regardless of the impact on vulnerable individuals.
More than 100,000 people every year in Britain do not have access to the specialist palliative care they so desperately need. That is the priority, but if MPs decide that assisted dying is the solution, then having a multi-professional socio-legal model outside healthcare is safer for patients and healthcare services, as it provides greater transparency and legitimacy. Such a model exists, and it is time for Falconer and fellow politicians to listen to the voices calling for such a model.
Claud Regnard
Retired consultant in palliative medicine, Merseyside
Assisted dying is a hugely emotional subject, and many personal experiences lead to understandable demands for the law to be changed (Two Deaths Have Shaped My Belief in the Right to Die. This Bill Could Change Everything, October 9). But what may seem best for individuals may not be what is best for society. As a former chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, I was often asked how I dealt with being responsible for an organization that sometimes denied treatment for NHS patients, often asking: ‘But what if it was one of were your relatives? ?”
My answer was simple: if one of my family members were seriously ill, I obviously wouldn’t want to have a limit on what would be paid to keep them alive. But I also understood that what seems best for an individual may not be best for society as a whole. Every pound can only be spent once, and the drive to help individuals can damage the care provided to others.
The same social reservation applies to assisted dying. From an individual perspective, assisted dying seems a logical development. But from society’s perspective, it will likely have a very different impact – with a host of unintended consequences.
It is critical that lawmakers focus on society as a whole and the risks inherent in redrawing the boundaries of the law. Once we blur that line, there is no turning back, and the elasticity with which assisted dying laws have been applied in other countries should serve as a warning that such legislation is inherently unstable.
David Haslam
Dorchester, Dorset
I am writing this letter as a caregiver for my deceased wife. She died in 2006 at the age of 42. She and members of her family had Von Hippel-Lindau disease – a genetic condition that, in her case, caused brain and spinal tumors and kidney cancer (leading to several years on kidney dialysis).
Life was extremely hard for my wife in the seven years leading up to her death. Suffering from chronic pain and increasingly severe disabilities, she was hospitalized for many months as her condition worsened. She felt the weight and responsibility of the care I and others gave her very heavily. I know that if the assisted dying law had existed, she, out of her deep love for those around her and a sense of guilt about what the burden of care entailed, would have chosen to end her life. This would have been deeply wrong. I am very concerned about people who feel the impact their illness and disability has on others and that this will lead to premature deaths, motivated not by pain and disability, but by a lack of care and support.
The first priority for our society must be to provide good care and appropriate pain management. All legislation and associated guidance relating to assisted dying should include provision for an assessment of the care and support available to terminally ill people and their carers. Fortunately, my wife and I were never able to choose an early death. I couldn’t have faced that burden. With the deepest respect for those with terminal conditions and whose views differ from mine.
Andrew Beeforth
Plumbland, Cumbria
I accompanied my wife to Dignitas in Switzerland exactly two years ago and I welcome the announcement of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill (MPs get a historic vote on the assisted dying bill in England and Wales, October 3). However, it seems that she is proposing a very limited number of eligibility criteria, and my wife, who had MS, would not be covered, as her situation fell into the category of unbearable suffering from an incurable condition, and MS is generally not considered as such. be a terminal illness.
Research from campaign group My Death, My Decision found that half of all UK residents who traveled to Switzerland for an assisted death had neurological conditions that were unlikely to be covered by Kim Leadbeater’s bill.
If her bill is passed unchanged, people like my wife will still be faced with traveling to Switzerland. I sincerely hope that the proposed Bill provides time for a full discussion of the eligibility criteria for assisted death and that lessons can be learned from the experiences of other countries.
Dave Sowry
London
As a 74-year-old diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, I share the experiences and feelings expressed by Colin White and Marika Sherwood in their letters (October 4). The paradox, however, is that the safeguards provided for in current proposals require those seeking help to demonstrate unimpaired mental capacity, thereby excluding people with dementia, regardless of previously expressed wishes or the current severity of their mental distress.
Name and address provided