- Assisted Dying Bill due to be debated in Parliament later today
- Health Secretary voiced concerns law could put pressure on the sick
- Here, two people whose loved ones begged them for death argue the case
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Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday voiced fears that the Assisted Dying Bill — to be debated in Parliament today — ‘could inadvertently put pressure’ on people who fear they’re a burden to their families.
Here, two deeply moving voices explain their opposing views on an issue dividing Britain.
Steve Riley-Snelling, 58, a property developer from Milton Keynes, lost his wife, Tracy, 49, to an agonising death from stomach cancer last October. He says:
I’ll always regret letting my wife linger in agony
Last July, my darling Tracy was given the devastating news that the stomach cancer she’d been diagnosed with a few months earlier was terminal.
It’s rare for stomach cancer to affect someone so young, and it seemed so unfair that Tracy, who was so beautiful and clever, with a high-powered job in the banking world, should be one of the unlucky ones.
She was a member of Mensa and certainly knew her own mind, so when Tracy said she wanted to go to Dignitas and end her life without suffering — unbearable though the thought of losing her was for me — I didn’t argue.
Tragic: Steve Riley-Snelling, 58, and his wife Tracy on their wedding day shortly before she died of cancer
She was a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s novels, and had seen a documentary in which he visited the clinic in Switzerland as he explored his plans to take his own life before Alzheimer’s disease robs him of the ability to do so.
I understand a dying person’s fears, but Tracy and I were soulmates, who had shared every moment for the previous ten years, so I struggled to face up to the thought of losing her, whatever the manner.
I pushed thoughts of her impending death to the back of my mind and concentrated instead on organising our wedding — we’d been engaged for eight years — and enjoying the time we had left together.
Although Tracy was very keen for us to marry before she died, she went ahead and sent off for the application forms from Dignitas, which she filled out meticulously.
We enjoyed one last wonderful holiday with Tracy’s son, Jameson, 16, on Spain’s Costa del Sol, followed by our dream wedding, on September 8, at the beautiful 15th-century Fawsley Hall in Daventry.
But there wasn’t time for her to die in the manner she had chosen. Immediately after the wedding, she deteriorated rapidly.
Within days, she needed constant morphine to control the intense pain and it was only then, seeing how Tracy was suffering, that I looked at the information on the Dignitas forms Tracy had ordered.
I discovered that, before she could go there to die, she needed to make two visits to Switzerland, at least a week apart, to be assessed by doctors.
‘I’ve had a great life’, she told me, ‘but I need it to end now’
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She was so ill that getting her there would have been extremely challenging, and we would have needed a nurse to travel with us to keep Tracy’s medication topped up.
As the law stands, the nurse would then have been arrested on her return to Britain for assisting a suicide. We could never have put somebody through that.
Because I didn’t do everything in my power to support her wishes to go to Dignitas, I now blame myself for Tracy being denied the dignified, peaceful, painless death that she had longed for.
In the seven weeks that followed our wedding, Tracy suffered dreadfully.
She wasted away to just six stone and kept pleading: ‘I’ve had enough, I want to go, I just wish someone would help me along the way.’
Three days before she died, she turned to me and said words that will remain with me for ever: ‘I love you, and I have had a great life — especially the past ten years with you, but you have to understand, I need it to end now.’
Two days later, I looked across at her, moaning in pain next to me, and gently put my hand over her mouth.
I kept it there for just a moment — I just couldn’t bring myself to kill the woman I loved.
Later that morning, the Marie Curie nurses arrived and told me to take the dog for a walk while they looked after Tracy.
‘She was a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s novels, and had seen a documentary in which he visited the clinic in Switzerland as he explored his plans to take his own life before Alzheimer’s disease robs him of the ability to do so’
About half an hour later, they called my mobile and said I should come back.
The next five hours, watching my wife in agony, were the most horrendous of my life — God knows what sort of a living hell it was for her.
She screamed, vomited blood, writhed around in agony on the bed and pleaded for someone to put her out of her misery.
I begged the nurses: ‘Surely you can do something to end this?’
‘We wouldn’t let animals suffer this badly’
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Their answer was always the same: ‘No, we have to wait for it to happen naturally.’ No one had prepared us for how intolerable the final hours would be.
And never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined such a terrible ending to a human life — we would not allow an animal to suffer in that way.
Finally, at 7.15pm on October 30 last year, Tracy took her last breath and, mercifully, it was all over.
Of course, I will never forget our wedding day and I have some beautiful photographs and videos of our last months together.
But if I’d known how much she would suffer, I would have prioritised the trip to Dignitas over our wedding.
We didn’t need to be husband and wife to prove how much we loved each other.
Now, I feel guilty every day and ask myself: ‘If I had done something different, would Tracy have had a better death?’
And I know the answer is that yes, she would.
Interview by Helen Carroll.
Baroness Finlay, 63, is Professor of Palliative Medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine, and a crossbencher in the House of Lords.
Ilora Finlay’s mother, Thais, died of cancer in 2009. She says:
If I’d let Mum die, she’d have missed her happiest years
There is an image I carry in my head of my lovely mum, sitting at her dining room table, surrounded by three generations of her devoted family as the sun streams through the windows.
Mum is seated at the head of the table that she and Dad bought just after rationing came to an end in the Fifties, in the house she had lived in for almost half a century.
In the bosom of her family, she was at her happiest, doing what she did best: talking, laughing and listening, and cuddling her little great-grandson.
A wonderful extra lease of life: Llora Finlay with her beloved mother Thais (right) who lived four years after expressing a wish to die while suffering from cancer
It is a simple memory, nothing grand, nothing history-making but one I will cherish for ever, partly because I almost didn’t have it.
When Mum became ill with breast cancer in 2005, which spread to her pelvis and lower back, she was adamant she did not want to live in pain and fear.
‘I want to die,’ Mum, then aged 84, told me time and time again as her pale body lay shrunken on a bed at her local hospice, The Princess Alice at Esher in Surrey.
I had always known that Mum thought assisted dying was a good thing. She was very outspoken, and two decades after she had lost my father to an aggressive brain tumour, she told my brother and me: ‘I’ve had a good life, I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.’
It is never easy sitting by the bedside of a loved one when they are dying; you want to make things better for them but often feel impotent.
She would have missed seeing her great-grandsons
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But my own mother, saying she wanted to die, felt like a rejection of our love — that as a family we had failed her by not providing her with the support she needed to see that she still had a role in our lives, even though she was frail.
And I felt particularly saddened because I had devoted my career as a doctor in palliative medicine to improving the care of the terminally-ill; now I could not do for my own mother what I was striving to do for all my patients — that is, improve their quality of life.
By the most bitter of ironies, after leaving her hospice bedside in the afternoons I would go to the House of Lords to oppose a Bill that would make assisted suicide legal in this country.
But whenever I told my mum I wanted her to live, she accused me of being selfish and told me I was personally responsible for denying her the one thing she craved: the release of death.
Bizarrely, it was the hospice
chaplain who changed Mum’s mind. Although she was agnostic, she enjoyed
chatting with him about philosophy and I noticed a gradual change in
her.
Ilora (far left) says the unexpected years before her mother Thais’ (far right) death were her happiest
I think she
realised, during these intellectual debates, that her mind was still
working, even though her body was failing her, and she was still able to
experience pleasure and could still contribute to society.
Over the following weeks, Mum started taking her drugs properly and let the physiotherapist teach her how to walk again.
Each
day brought new optimism, as the radiotherapy and pain relief took
effect, and within a few weeks, she was able to return home.
Arriving back at her spotless house, in New Malden, Surrey, was emotional for Mum.
Incredibly, she lived there for four more years, sitting in the garden, laughing with friends and even cuddling two new great-grandsons she never expected to see born.
And what years they were! Mum said they were among the best of her long life, as she enjoyed simple pleasures and realised how much she meant to those around her.
Mum realised her mind was still sharp
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This strong, independent woman, a respected teacher, who’d lived all over the world and paid her own way through university, suddenly found serenity in receiving.
The neighbours who took her to the supermarket, who dropped round with a bowl of soup or a bouquet of cut flowers: they showed Mum how much she meant to people.
When I was a child, I often visited Hampton Court Gardens with my parents and brother.
In her last years, we took Mum there again one cold, but glorious day, and shared the beauty in every rose in bloom, in the trimmed hedges, and in the colours and shapes of nature bursting into bloom.
It was those little moments that made that extra time so poignant: looking forward to family lunches, to Christmas, to new life.
And, of course, Mum was able to enjoy two great-grandchildren, one born shortly after she returned home, the second just before she died.
My brother and I know how lucky we were to have her for four more, mostly glorious, years.
Throughout that time she would visit the wonderful hospice as a day patient once a month.
The best part for her was being able to leaf through all the celebrity gossip in Hello! magazine — which she would never have dreamt of asking anyone to buy for her!
Ultimately she slid back into illness again and died peacefully in the autumn of 2009, aged 88, surrounded by her loving, and very grateful, family.
Ilora says her mother (pictured) would certainly have opted for death aged 84 if she could have done, and cannot agree with a law that would have allowed it
I remain profoundly grateful that assisted suicide was — and is — illegal in this country. I will continue to oppose it when it comes before Parliament today.
Having first-hand experience of this complex situation only confirms my resolve.
I do not believe it is compatible for the medical profession to be trying to improve quality of life for seriously-ill patients while at the same time aiding and abetting their suicides.
I know without a doubt that my strong, determined mother would have opted for death if she had been able to, aged 84.
When I juxtapose that image against the joy I know she went on to experience, it is one I cannot bear to think about.
Interview by Sarah Chalmers.
Sign here to die in six days: How the law would work
Under the terms of the Assisted Dying Bill, a terminally-ill person could — with the agreement of two doctors — end their life in a process lasting as little as six days.
Home Affairs Editor JAMES SLACK looks at how it would work?.?.?.
Under the assisted dying bill, doctors would be able to approve a patient ending their own life, but the lethal dose of drugs would have to be self-administered
What’s the current law?
Under the 1961 Suicide Act, it’s an offence to encourage or assist suicide. The maximum sentence is 14 years.
However, the director of public prosecutions issued guidance in 2010 making a distinction between ‘compassionate acts to assist someone to end their own life’ and ‘malicious encouragement or assistance of suicide’.
Thus, prosecution is unlikely if the dead person made a ‘voluntary, well-informed decision to end their life’, and if the person who helped them was wholly motivated by compassion.
A charge is likely, however, if the person committing suicide was under 18 years of age, lacked mental capacity or was physically able to take their own life without help.
No protections apply to doctors or nurses, who could be prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Is anybody ever prosecuted?
Rarely. Over the past five years, only one person has been convicted — a man who was found guilty last year after supplying a friend with petrol and a lighter to set himself on fire.
Of all cases referred to the CPS since April 2009, 65 were not proceeded with and 13 were withdrawn by the police. There are currently eight on-going cases.
Also, no prosecutions have been brought against relatives who took a loved one to die at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.
What does the Assisted Dying Bill propose?
Under Lord Falconer’s Private Member’s Bill, it would become legal for anyone aged 18 or over to be given help by a doctor or nurse to end their own life.
Two doctors would have to verify that the patient had less than six months to live and had reached their own, informed decision to die.
It excludes people who are simply old, paralysed or suffering from debilitating conditions that are non-terminal.
So, ironically, the law would not help multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, Britain’s most prominent right-to-die campaigner, who won a legal challenge in 2009 for the guidelines on assisted suicide to be re-examined, or have been relevant to the late Tony Nicklinson, who had locked-in syndrome and campaigned for the right to die.
Last week, in the Mail, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, said his change of mind on the issue and backing of the Bill was the result of the ‘deepest influence’ on him of Mr Nicklinson’s suffering.
Anyone suffering from conditions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s would also be excluded, even if terminally ill, because they are not considered to be mentally competent.
Nor would this law accept so-called ‘living wills’ written in advance, stating a wish to die under certain circumstances.
Will people have to express their wish to die in writing?
Yes. There will be a standard one-page written form that a patient must sign. The declaration is only 116 words long (which compares with Facebook’s terms and conditions which run to 4,285 words.)Â
The document must be signed in the presence of a witness who must not be a relative or directly involved in the patient’s care.
This is intended as a safeguard against undue pressure from a relation who may benefit financially.
The form must then be signed by the two doctors. One has to be the person who the patient wants to help them take the lethal overdose of drugs.
They can be the doctor who first diagnosed the terminal illness. The second must be from a different practice or medical team to prevent collusion.
Is requiring the consent of two doctors as adequate safeguard?
Under the proposed law, both doctors must independently conclude that a patient has only six months to live.
This is designed to protect family GPs — who could come under undue pressure to consent to a right-to-die request — from having sole responsibility.
However, parallels have inevitably been drawn between this Assisted Dying Bill and the 1967 Abortion Act. It, also, stipulated that a termination must be sanctioned by two doctors.
Yet disturbing evidence soon emerged of doctors being prepared to pre-sign dozens of forms without any reference to the patient’s actual circumstances.
Earlier this year, the General Medical Council identified 67 such cases.
One doctor had signed so many blank forms that they were still being used by an abortion clinic four years after he left the profession.
There are now nearly 200,000 terminations a year, and anti-abortion campaigners are convinced that the strict protection built into the legislation is being widely abused and that abortion is now practically available ‘on demand’.
How long must elapse between the declaration being signed and death?
Elsewhere in the world, the minimum period is normally 14 days, to give the patient time to consider their actions fully.
However, if the two doctors agree that death is likely to take place naturally within one month of their first being asked to sign the form, this period can be reduced to only six days.
As a result, a person given a late diagnosis of terminal cancer could be dead within a week of first considering the idea.
Who administers the lethal injection of drugs?
As a key safeguard, the medication must be self-administered. A doctor will prepare the drugs, but he or she would not be legally allowed to take part in the ‘final act’.
As a result, anyone intending to take their own life would be killing themselves before they become too sick or incapacitated and lost the ability to self-medicate.
The doctor must remain nearby until death occurs, though they do not necessarily have to be in the same room.
Can doctors refuse to participate?
Yes. The Bill contains a clause on ‘conscientious objection’.
If a patient’s own doctor refuses to help them die, they are entitled to find another one who is.
In Oregon (where assisted suicide was legalised in 1997), half the patients requesting euthanasia use a new doctor.
Is it really possible to predict someone has less than six months to live?
Despite huge advances in medical techniques, this is a very inexact science. Doctors often disagree about a prognosis.
Indeed, there are countless examples of people given just weeks or months to live who survive for much longer.
Can a person change their mind once they’ve signed?
Yes, up until the moment the lethal cocktail of drugs is taken.
A doctor would also be able to revoke the declaration that a patient has less than six months to live at any stage if they show signs of improvement.
However, anti-euthanasia campaigners fear that doctors would feel under enormous pressure not to rescind their original decision.
What protection would there be from a relative pressuring you to die?
The requirement of two doctors’ separate agreements and the fact the lethal drugs must be self-administered are intended to be a protection against a meddling family.
However, very ill people who require constant care and who do not wish to be a burden on their loved ones may feel under unwanted pressure to end their life early.
In Holland, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, self-administered deaths have doubled in just six years and this year’s total may reach a record 6,000
Also, considering the high cost of private healthcare or extra nursing support, the terminally ill may also feel impelled to act to save their family money or to prevent any inheritance they might be leaving being eroded.
In a report entitled Medical Ethics, a House of Lords Select Committee warned some years ago that it was ‘virtually impossible to ensure all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law could not be abused’.
It added that it was concerned vulnerable people would ‘feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death’.
Is this the start of a slippery slope towards euthanasia?
Certainly, there are grave fears about where things will end if the State — via the NHS — legally authorises suicides.
As the NHS’s own Choices website chillingly states: ‘The concern is that a society that allows voluntary euthanasia will gradually change its attitudes to include non-voluntary and then involuntary euthanasia.’
There would be likely to be pressure from right-to-die campaigners for the legislation to be further relaxed to allow people with other conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, to kill themselves.
Another worrying factor is the possibility of right-to-die being seen as a solution to the increasing financial pressures on the NHS which is burdened by an ageing population.
Would the law lead to worse end-of-life care?
The NHS Choices website says that legal euthanasia ‘may discourage research into palliative treatments, and possibly prevent cures for people with terminal illnesses from being found’.
It adds: ‘Asking doctors to abandon their obligation to preserve human life could damage the doctor-patient relationship.
‘Causing death on a regular basis could become a routine administrative task for doctors, leading to a lack of compassion when dealing with elderly, disabled or terminally-ill people.’
What are the lessons to be learned from overseas?
In Holland, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, self-administered deaths have doubled in just six years and this year’s total may reach a record 6,000. The annual rate of increase is around 15 per cent.
The figures do not include deaths by what is called ‘euthanasia by omission’, by which patients are rendered unconscious through ‘terminal sedation’ before they are dehydrated and starved to death.
This practice now accounts for more than 12 per cent of all deaths in Holland.
Doctors in Belgium (where the euthanasia law was extended to children this year) are collectively putting to death an average of five people every day — with a 27 per cent surge in one year.
Alarm has also been raised in Oregon, where two cancer sufferers who were reliant on the U.S. social health programme Medicaid for their care, were told the state authorities would not fund any more treatment — but would pay for drugs to end their lives.
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RedToto,
Macclesfield, United Kingdom,
7 minutes ago
When a family friend was dying of throat cancer, I will always remember him say “You wouldn’t let a dog suffer, the way that I am!†Let us have the right to choose, it wouldn’t be compulsory – it’d be a choice!
Marty51,
Mecca,
12 minutes ago
If a person is thoroughly tested independently to have “mental capacity†then it is there right to choose.
How dare the state legislate for somebody to continue living when a terminal illness is ravaging their body and to sadly die eventually wearing a nappy, dehydrated, incoherent and in pain.
A “good†dignified death is a rare thing due to lack of specialist palliative care, hospice places and the dismantling of our once great NHS.
Please, give people the choice!
David Smith,
Leominster,
30 minutes ago
I saw two disabled ladies saying that this bill should be stopped. No one has the right to end their own lives. Now they are very strong and want to carry on, but there are those of us who are not. I live for being outdoors, target shooting, horse riding, gardening, walking etc. It’s a very active life. If I was then confined to a room, in a bed, unable to move , not even able to wipe my own a—, or hug my children then I could not carry on. I would become bitter and twisted which would not be how I want my girls to remember me. Now if these ladies, one of whom can’t talk anymore, want to carry on being a burden to their families, the NHS and to themselves then fine. But I want that right to choose.
ANYWAYUP-69,
dingwall, United Kingdom,
moments ago
ideal world,
Nuneaton, United Kingdom,
34 minutes ago
My life my body. If I want to die then I should be able to do it.
Amy,
England,
57 minutes ago
Why does it need to divide anyone, it’s not mandatory, those that disagree need not use the service. Nor is it the death penalty, I’m sure that anyone who changes their mind last minute will not be made to go ahead with it. It comes down to this, your mind and body are your own and you should have the right to do with them whatever you choose so long as you do not harm another person.
Frankyboy,
Lancashire,
1 hour ago
O.K. if it’s going to be legal to kill someone then their should be a restoration of the death penalty
RedToto,
Macclesfield, United Kingdom,
10 minutes ago
manikat,
Weybridge, United Kingdom,
1 hour ago
This is a very difficult subject. On the one hand I support those who feel they wish to end their lives due to unbearable pain and to have control over their body and their life. However I feel this would be the thin edge of the wedge. Once enshrined in law I it would not be long before it went the way of abortion where as long ago as 1985, abortion, despite the law, was available pretty much on demand. There are ways of killing yourself with easily obtained drugs from the chemist without the backing of law or involving anyone else. As I said this proposed law would be the start of the slippery slope.
margaret,
york, United Kingdom,
1 hour ago
What I can not understand is why some people with Cancer died an awful painful death and others do not .my friend died in hospice and was peaceful, so she must have had enough drugs to control the pain so why are not people at home giving the same amount knowing what agony cancer can cause
Kentishmaid1,
Margate, United Kingdom,
1 hour ago
I can see both sides to this argument! If you are the person with a diagnosis say of terminal cancer, it can be very traumatic, the thought of what you have to go through before you die, and then maybe you decide to end your life. If you are the person that is the partner of the ill person, and know they are going to die you want to keep them with you for as long as you can. The hard thing is I don’t even know if I was in this position what would I do.
barry,
barnet,
1 hour ago
I have terminal cancer and at the later stages I am bound to suffer and fall apart. Why should I suffer because a third party says I must suffer regardless.
Its my body, my mind and my life, will the do gooders save themselves from themselves and leave others to do as they please. Please allow me to say when I have had enough of the suffering.
No I do not need any ones sympathy I need the right to say BI all!!!
ideal world,
Nuneaton, United Kingdom,
32 minutes ago
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