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Letter of the week
Dear Editor
Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed its Second Reading in Parliament, amended to include a proviso against medical staff mentioning ‘assisted dying’ to patients first. However, with no time left to vote on more changes, and with so many concerns still remaining, further debate and voting will take place on June 13.
One can only wish MPs good luck with that; so far, any concessions regarding patient safety – admittedly, in the context of helping sick people commit suicide, a contradiction in terms – have been dismissed by the Committee chosen by Ms Leadbeater to reflect her own views, while the amendment ruling out medical professionals raising the matter with patients was conceded with the air of reassuring nervous children afraid of the dark that if it makes them feel better, they can leave the light on at night – there is really no need to worry about the bogeyman in the wardrobe.
‘We have the best of intentions’, they seem to say, ‘what could possibly go wrong?’ Unfortunately, the bogeyman is now under the bed, but Ms Leadbeater and her supporters seem not to notice, despite the fact that any restrictions placed on her Bill simply undermine her original premise: that people dying in agony should be allowed the option of taking their own lives. Leaving aside the obvious point that if anyone is dying in agony, the NHS should be helping them to die peacefully and pain free, not providing assisted suicide, it should be clear that any delays in the killing process would mean even more agony. Their desire to relieve pain (by killing) would be undermined by every ‘safeguard’.
Historically, it has been the practice for ‘right to die’ campaigners to promote ‘assisted dying’ with as many ‘safeguards’ as are necessary to reassure critics, so that once passed, the scope of the law can be widened to allow for all those cases originally excluded on ‘safety’ grounds.
If the unfortunate patient does die while waiting to kill themselves, this merely highlights the need to improve palliative care, not to legalise self-poisoning. However, supporters’ references to ‘choice’ and emphasis on autonomy (although not in relation to demanding better care) betray the real aim: ‘the right to die’. Choosing to die does, of course, sound better than euthanasia, a campaign that arose out of the eugenics movement even before the creation of the National Health Service. However, by definition, patients are vulnerable to coercion and suggestion, as well as the feeling of being a burden, especially when the NHS is always said to be under such pressure.
The truth is that sick people wish to get better, but even if that seems impossible, they wish to live as long as possible, not to cut short their lives. The fact that not one single disability organisation supports this Bill should alert Ms Leadbeater and her supporters to this important fact. Death, when it comes, is a natural event for which the body is prepared, and which can be made easier with appropriate care. The thing that most people fear is an unnatural death, but that is exactly what ‘assisted dying’ is – the most unnatural death of all.
Instead of accepting this, ‘right to die’ proponents contend that suicide should be a sort of human right. Dame Esther Rantzen, herself tragically afflicted with terminal lung cancer, but now fortunately in remission owing to treatment, by her own experience highlights the danger of the seeming ‘safeguard’ of restricting ‘assisted dying’ to those with six months to live.
She remains committed to this campaign, however, and has even claimed of ‘some who oppose this crucial reform’ that ‘[m]any of them have undeclared personal religious beliefs which mean no precautions would satisfy them.’
And yet, when campaigners ignore all the evidence from Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Jersey and elsewhere, of abuse, coercion, the emergence of a ‘slippery slope’ of widening remits turning ‘assisted dying’ into euthanasia, and the emergence of ‘euthanomics’ as governments realise the savings that can be made by killing people rather than caring for them, the only conclusion one can draw is that they themselves have a ‘disguised religion’: ‘the right to die’, which would swiftly become a duty to die.
Still, if the Bill passes, the well and the wealthy would be able to relax in the knowledge that they could (in theory at least) time their own deaths to suit themselves, while the less fortunate real patients would be ‘helped out’ of life rather than just helped.
The Bill’s next reading will be followed by a vote on whether to pass it as a whole or reject it, either on the same day or on some future date.
All the more reason to oppose it while we still can, because such measures are easier to prevent it than to reverse once passed. More than 50 years ago, abortion was legalised only for really difficult cases; now, after over 10 million abortions, attempts are being made not only to criminalise the offer of real choice to needy pregnant mothers, but also to censor any perceived criticism of pre-birth child destruction. If the Leadbeater Bill passes, how long would it be before any public reference to patient poisoning was silenced, as the National Health Service gradually turns into the National Death Service?
Ann Farmer
Essex
Things are getting heated!
Dear Editor
I just couldn’t bear to have people going on about how hot it has been, so I had to let off steam with a letter!
James Dent
Assisted dying? Funny way to say murder
Dear Editor
Assisted dying seems to be only concerned with those facing a period of painful illness, leading to death, who may wish to skip that journey and go directly to the main event.
Many people in that position will be wise enough to have made their own arrangements to leave, and do not require assistance.
There are also disabled people, who have found their painless but limited lives to be unenjoyable, so will simply kill themselves, and some do that every year. Across the spectrum, many will have already dealt with their own situations.
In Scotland at present, helping someone to die is known as murder, and should remain so, as legalising it will open a route to be used by others for their own benefit.
Malcolm Parkin
Kinross
Net Zero bumping up prices
Dear Editor
The highly subsidised renewables industry has repeatedly said that renewables provide the cheapest electricity concealing the fact that consumers have now paid £2billion to wind turbine owners, mostly foreign, to switch off their turbines. There are lies and there are green lies. Net Zero Watch has produced detailed research that £197 of the £327 real-term increase in electricity prices since 2015 can be attributed to Net Zero. The £197 is made up of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing capacity market and grid strengthening.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
Two-tier policing strikes again!
Dear Editor
The Telegraph reported this week that Gary Lineker reposted something antisemitic.
The question is, why has he not had a visit from the police, for what was clearly a Non-Crime Hate Incident?
Roger J Arthur
Hollybank
