I freely admit I didn’t watch the Terry Pratchett documentary on the Right to Die. At the last minute I voted in favour of a quiet glass of wine with Mr G in the setting sun. It seemed an altogether healthier way to spend my time.

I have nothing against suicide; it is your life, if you want to waste it, for whatever reason – and my own Father did – then go ahead. I have no problem with capital punishment as it happens, even if it’s not a strictly Libertarian view.

I do have a major problem with assisted suicide. The name for a start, disingenuous, like joy-riding, it strives to make a potentially murderous situation sound somehow vaguely normal, the sort of things normal families might do. How could ‘assisting’ someone possibly be wrong?

I’ll tell you how. I have a close friend, a very dear friend, who has been down this road, not of her own choice. I have watched the emotional devastation, the very real tearing apart of normal, loving feelings. It is, quite simply, a totally, utterly, completely, wrong thing to ask of someone who loves you – and who might reasonably expect you to love them in return.

How can they refuse? There you are, patently in pain, facing death, wringing their emotions inside out with every minute of the day – and YOU decide, you, not them – “I’ve had enough of this, I demand my right to die, and because I’m now infirm, that becomes your responsibility”.

So the very person who has cared for you enough, loved you to pieces, wiped your backside, given up their life and ignored their family for months on end as you slid into this terribly sad terminal illness, now has to shoulder an additional burden.

They have to make you a cup of tea, gently lift a digestive biscuit to your lips – ‘you must try to eat something Dad’ – and then diplomatically slip out of the room, sit down in front of the computer, and start Googling Dignitas.

Right there, there’s another euphemism. Dignitas my left foot. A cold grey concrete building in Zurich. See picture above.

When they’ve found Dignitas, they have to arrange the bank transfers – Dignitas don’t do credit, believe me. The air line tickets – two tickets to Zurich, just one return please. Just me and a little tin of ashes. The child care arrangements, it’s hardly a fun day out for all the family. The lies to the neighbours – you can’t turn round and say you’re taking Dad to Dignitas for the day can you? The Doctor to come in and sign the certificate to say you are of sound mind, and have a terminal illness. Whilst they wonder if perhaps he should be certifying them for agreeing to do this.

Cold, hard, formal arrangements; because it’s your right to impose this on them isn’t it?  Just when they are breaking their heart because you will soon be dead anyway – just not soon enough for you. Not the way you want to die. So you make it their problem, and sit back, munch on your digestive and contemplate your ‘rights’.

I’m not going to get into the slippery slope arguments, I’ve rehashed them too many times on this blog, the Mental Capacity Act that gives government apparatchiks the right to decide that it is time for you to go, and ‘order’ your Doctors to starve and dehydrate you to death.

There is another slippery slope that no one ever seems to mention.

‘Rights-creep’. If it is your right to die, at a time of your choosing, if it is your right to die in the manner of your choosing – for how long do you think it will remain as ‘dignified’ as Dignitas? (There’s an oxymoron.)

It’s your right innit? It’s the way you want to go – half time in the front stalls of the Arsenal-Liverpool cup final, sod the people sitting next to you. Surrounded by woad painted new age travellers in the mud of Glastonbury? –‘he always had a sense of humour’. Perhaps you’d prefer the main banking hall of Lloyd’s – after all they lost you your entire pension. Life-time mariner? Fancy being target practice for the Navy Seals?

You can’t arrange it, not you, you can’t even lift a cup of hemlock to your lips – no, your nearest and dearest will have to make the arrangements.

Brr,brrr – ‘Hello, can you tell me, is it possible to arrange a private box at the Royal Ballet? My Dad wants me to bump him off there’……..They’ll have to bring back ‘Jim’ll fix it’ to help arrange it all.

Once you’ve got the ‘right’ under sub-section 164 (b) of the new Legally Sanctioned Murder Act 2012 – that sounds better than assisted suicide! – to force the person who has loved you so deeply all these years that you now ‘appoint’ them the lucky person who gets to legally murder you when it pleases you, society can hardly deny you the little old right to go out in style.

Have you been to a good funeral lately? The massed brass band playing Danny Boy, or Knees Up Mother Brown if you want. The Teddy Bears, and flowers lining the footpath, good grief, don’t imagine there will be anything dignified about some people’s request as to where and when they want to go.

It’s all very well breaking TV rules and showing one loving, dignified, exit ala Dignitas after the watershed. It’s all very well imagining that this will go no further than the nice Doctor giving you a Mickey Finn nightcap. It’s all very well Debbie Purdy and her sad situation being wheeled out yet again to comment – I got in trouble before for saying it was handy she was on wheels.

Hard cases don’t make good law.

If you think you are going to find yourself in a situation where you may not be able to drive up Snowdonia with a length of hosepipe one day; if you really can’t face the pain, or whatever it is that ails you – then you have the perfect right to take your own life, quietly, in the manner of your choosing, when you can, how you can.

Don’t force your family to behave as though killing you is a perfectly normal thing to do. It isn’t. You owe them better than that – especially if they are your children, or partner.

The bureaucratic nightmare that is a ‘dignified’ journey to Dignitas or its equivalent shouldn’t have to be trod by anyone you love. They have rights too, and emotional blackmail shouldn’t be allowed to strip them of those rights.

No, I don’t particularly care about the one or two people who can be shown to possibly be facing a painful and undignified death. There is an end to it – it’s called death.In the meantime there is palliative care.

I care immensely about the pressure that will be put on thousands of perfectly innocent and decent people whose entire lives will be irrevocably changed and overshadowed by the turmoil inherent in having to kill you simply because they loved you.

Tom Henderson
July 24, 2011 at 13:54

Isn’t the argument in this article circular?

Assisted dying is bad – it is wrong to ask your carer to assist with
something bad – therefor assisted dying is bad.

if you see assisted dying as a good thing, the argument works in
reverse.

also, all that stuff about dying at a football game. legalisation does not
mean total de-regulation. (same thing to all those people who are against any
drug legalisation on the grounds that drug dealers will then be able to go
into playgrounds)

thanks,

Tom

p.s. I totally agree, isn’t the Dignitas building horrible (it has to be on
an industrial estate as the result of a Swiss Supreme court case actually). So
lets build a lovely, suitable, beautiful cathedral-like structure in the UK to
send our loved ones off in style!

fake June 16, 2011 at 11:08

Surely if you are asking your other half to put you down, that is something
between you and your other half.

Whatever emotional stresses such a situation causes are between them,
whether one person should ask another such a thing is between those people,
and it’s not for the state to say “No, you can’t”.

Denny June 15, 2011 at 21:06

Okay .. you need an edit facility .. I usually have the opportunity to
correct my grammar mistakes ..

Denny June 15, 2011 at 21:03

** Seriously .. cough

Denny June 15, 2011 at 21:02

Serioulsy think you miss the point … it’s the freedom to choose.

Any illegal use could be countered with an official register that accepts a
notarised statement which has to signed by the person when he is capable of
doing so. In order that his rights are protected. It cannot be done after the
fact and verbal “he told me this is what he wanted” does not count.

But the freedom to choose should be made available no matter the
difficulties. Every situation is unique and it is up to the individuals
involved and not someone else’s moralistic view.

binao June 15, 2011 at 10:36

I’ve read all the postings, but am unconvinced of the case for
Dignitas.
I accept that I am still raw from my wife’s recent death, but I
have previous experience of similar situations.
I am convinced that there
is very much more that can be done to improve end of life care.
My
experience of the NHS would suggest avoid at all costs going into hospital
with a terminal condition unless there is a good chance of coming out alive.
If the patient becomes too ill to discharge, it is not a good environment to
die in.

Angry
Exile June 15, 2011 at 10:35

I think those opposed to assisted suicide think those of us who are for it
are all demanding the right to die how and when we choose. In fairness some
are, just as the “it’s me rights, innit” attitude pops up everywhere else.
However, it’s not about the right to die as such but the freedom to seek out
expert help if you want it, that’s all. It’s not asking for any guarantee that
such help should be readily available, it’s not asking for GPs or any other
medical practitioners to offer the service when they don’t want to. It sure as
hell shouldn’t be about trying to get suicide on the NHS – this should never,
ever be a service a government should be involved in, especially not one that
can’t make the budgets work and faces a pension time-bomb. It’s not “please
kill me” being said to the doctors, but “please stop getting in the way” being
said to the government.

I accept the effects on family are not nice to describe it as the right to
put them through hell is looking at it from only one side – do the family have
the right to force the would-be suicide to endure the torment of a life that
they want to end? One way or the other someone’s going to go through hell, and
since the family are going to have to deal with their loved one dying
eventually anyway they’re in for a bad time either way. I’d suggest that the
greater wrong is to insist that someone cling on to life against their will
and that while I don’t doubt that it’s an awful experience for families the
suicide is no more responsible for how other people feel about it than how
they feel about any other choice they made in their lives.

Westerlyman June 15, 2011 at 08:19

I own my body and my life. That is the libertarian position. If I choose to
end that life, that is my choice. I have a wife and children and other
relatives so I would consider their feelings and consult them but ultimately,
if I knew that I was going to die in pain and/or confusion, I would want the
choice to end it earlier at a time, place and with companions I care for.

I would not ask my wife to administer the final dose, I would do that
myself, but I would hope that she would accept my decision and keep me company
at the end. This seems so much more humane than the alternative. Under the
present laws in the UK I could be forced to die a horrible and undignified
death which is likely to affect my loved ones far more.

Anna I do not understand how you could hold the alternative view, unless it
is a religious objection.

Livewire June 15, 2011 at 06:15

Not sure if a standard principle can ever apply when each situation is
going to be very different, conflicting views between relatives and patient,
even between relatives, and
there may be options such as no antibiotics if
pneumonia starts, which was called the ‘old man’s friend’ with good reason,
etc.
My own view is that a lucky life is if you live to an age when you
aren’t yet infirm, an age which is impossible to predict, I once met someone
who had served in WW1 and was
aged 102, their only health problems were
vision and hearing, and they used to walk from a nursing home to their
daughter’s house every sunday for lunch.
Before infirmity sets in you would
hope for a quick end, a coronary, or stroke during sleep. It’s trusting to
luck rather than defining a policy, but I think that we do that every time we
do anything where there’s a slight risk, i.e. driving or many other daytime
activities.

john malpas June 15, 2011 at 00:43

Your article seems flippant about chosen modes of dying and presupposes all
sort of things.
What if there is no family who cares.. This is the modern
way.
At the end of the day pain is the answer to your sensitivities. That
is why torture decides things. Morals fly out the window when you
suffer.
And morphine don’t work all that well. Whatever they say.

Psychonaut99
June 14, 2011 at 23:49

SadButMad highlights an important point. A lot of the anti comments in this
thread talk about people who are elderly or infirm feeling somehow obliged to
end their lives because they don’t want to be a burden. That’s a situation
where a non-euthenasia solution is obvious (in principal anyway): stop making
them feel like burdens. Care for them properly.

There is a clear distintion between that and a situation like Terry
Pratchett’s. Pratchett is an intelligent, capable man staring down the barrel
of an incurable illness. That illness will kill him, but not before it robs
him of his memory and his reason, and subjects him to a period of confusion,
anguish and fear that could last for years.

And he’s thought: bugger that for a game of soldiers.

That’s got nothing to do with worrying about being a burden, and everything
to do with being in a situation where there are only two choices, both of
which are pretty crappy and rationally choosing the one which seems to him to
be slightly less crappy.

SadButMadLad June
14, 2011 at 22:59

PS. Just over 800 people complained about the BBC programme the last time I
looked. Around 700 complained about F1 taking the place of the Antiques
Roadshow when it overran.

SadButMadLad June
14, 2011 at 22:54

Currently there is only one law covering assisted suicide. That of
murder.

There is also the Hippocratic oath which doctors sometime use to the
extreme keeping people alive for just a few hours longer than nature
intends.

So you get cases where someone is seriously ill, in pain, and has very
little time left. Their loved ones helped them die and so get arrested and
charged with murder and sentenced to a jail for a number of years. Public
opinion in such cases tends to the view that the family should not be
jailed.

The other side of the coin is that of someone suffering from depression, or
just being old and infirm and not being able to do the things that they
enjoyed doing, tired with life basically. When they are helped to die, their
loved ones are rightly seen as criminals by the public.

However you also get people who refuse help when they are near the end of
their lives. Are they being helped to die by the medical profession? Is this
assisted suicide?

Quite rightly hard cases make bad laws. But they tend to be single hard
cases. When the hard cases are many you can build up a map of what is
acceptable and what is not to society.

For instance, how long before a terminally ill person is expected to die is
assisted suicide OK. If someone has hours left to live, and they ask for help
to die should it be refused just to keep them high on morphine. What about
days? Weeks? Months?

Should depression and mental illnesses be excluded? Should it only be
cancer and other serious diseases where assisted suicide qualifies. Without
any laws you can get bad cases were people are forced to travel abroad to do
things outside our laws and without any help to cover them if it goes wrong.
Just like all the Irish women who travel to the UK.

As for slippery slope. The slope is only there if society allows it to
slide. If they don’t like it then there will be public backlash. Currently the
public are slightly in favour of some form of assisted suicide because of the
highly emotive cases that have been put through the judicial system.

It will takes years for society to come to grips with it. And it should
take that long. There is a lot to discuss. It will also be a slow process for
people to accept that death is part of life. Currently death is a big huge
taboo. When someone dies, they are wisked off by the undertakers and not seen
again. Death is seen as something to be scared of, something to hide,
something to not talk about.

JuliaM June 15,
2011 at 05:58

With the Belgian version of euthanasia, you’re often whisked somewhere else entirely…

Michael June 14, 2011 at 22:27

… only it’s not just about you, is it? This is possibly the most
significant area in which your personal choices have an impact on others, on
your family, and on the rest of the community within which you live.

carol42 June 14, 2011 at 22:25

Just read your previous article on this subject, it is very different from
this one, what changed your mind? I can find little to disagree with in the
first one, it seems rather strange that you should hold such different
views.

berenike June 14,
2011 at 22:22

A hospice doctor told me that in surveys of medical professionals, the
highest proportion of those in favour of assisted suicide are those with least
contact with the dying (anaesthesiologists, those working in labs) and the
highest proportion against, are those with the most contact with the dying.

Thank you very much for this post, Anna. It resonates very much with my
experience.

I wasn a live-in carer for a bed-ridden octogenarian widow with depression,
in conversation with whom the idea of a sick person being a burden on society,
or of life being not worth living never came up – until she listened to a
debate on legalising euthanasia. The effect that had on her was heartbreaking.
She’d never thought of anyone else as a burden on society, or as have a life
not worth living, and so had never before thought of herself that way (that
is, she appreciated that people were taking trouble to help her, and that it
cost them time and effort, but she knew, because that is how she had thought
of people whom she helped, that it wasn’t a trouble for which she personally
was responsible). I was no relation of hers, she’d lived alone for 35 years,
there was almost nothing between her and this new idea of being a burden, that
she might be better dead than alive.

carol42 June 14, 2011 at 21:59

I suppose you think it is better by the NHS pathway? just let the patient
die through lack of food and water or other neglect. Might be ok if you can
get into a Hospice but there are not enough places. I have had cancer and
there is a fair chance it will come back one day. I have no intention of
living beyond the time I can take care of myself or with minimal help. I would
not ask my family to do it so I couldn’t afford to leave it too long if I
become ill again. I have had a good life and want a good death but would be a
lot happier if it were permissable to ask a Dr. for help as long as you were
of sound mind. I watched the programme and thought it very moving and
dignified but as long as it is the only way it is only available if you can
afford it. I am not anti abortion but I cannot understand a society that
permits the killing of perfectly healthy unborn babies but denies an old or
terminally ill person the right to die when they feel it is time. It is
Dignatas, painful for the family if they accompany you, or, if you are able, a
lonely death to keep them out of it. It is rare that I disagree with this blog
but I certainly do this time.

Westerlyman June 14, 2011 at 21:25

I watched the programme and found it extremely moving.

I have also watched two people close to me die slowly at the hands of the
NHS. One was 80 and had advanced Parkinsons desease. His quality of life was
non existent as he had also mostly lost his mind. He had good days where he
was able to recognize us and talk coherently but mostly bad days where he was
delusional. The rest of us cared for him, especially his wife who was herself
becoming ill due to the stress of caring for him. We would have continued to
care for him right to the end, however, we put him into a care home to give
his wife some respite and within 2 days he had been so neglected that he had
to be admitted to hospital. The staff at the hospital refused to give him food
or water and he died 10 days later. It was the most disgusting and heartless
thing I have ever seen. The process, and callousness of the NHS staff
involved, traumatised every member of my family.

The other close person was only 50 and had inoperable liver cancer. She
died slowly and in pain and even in her last few days the wretched NHS staff
wanted to take her into hospital to have a blood transfusion which would have
prolonged her life by maybe 24 hours. She was already barely conscious and had
been begging for her life to end for days.

The alternative that was shown in the programme by Terry Pratchett was
dignified and caring. You should watch it if you have not as all the questions
one can imagine were asked (and answered).

I thought before watching it that the concept was cold and commercial. I
could not have been more wrong. All the people at Dignitas appeared to be
caring professionals who were scrupulous about providing safeguards and
ensuring that the only person who made the decisions at each step was the
person committing suicide. And they did commit suicide. It was not assisted in
the sense that someone else gave the fatal dose. They gave it to themselves
after assessments and information and safeguards.

Please watch the programme before making up your own mind. It was
especially poignant as Terry Pratchett knows that he also faces the choice, in
the not too distant future, of whether to die in the UK naturally, probably
long after he has lost all his faculties, or whether to opt for assisted
suicide.

Simon Cooke June
14, 2011 at 21:01

Anna thanks for writing this – I thought I was a lone voice screaming at
the “right to die” people. Telling them that they were just giving permission
– making accepting death a duty, an obligation in the old. Allowing those
without scruples to manipulate a bureaucratic system to shuffle Great Uncle
Sid (the one with the six bedroom house worth £350,000) off the mortal coil a
little faster.

Working with the old tells you that depression – desparate depression – is
every day. My mum said – and she worked with the elderly for 30 years – that
you hear “I’m a burden, I’d be better dead” every day. It is a small step to
create a system where this wish – born of loneliness and depression not a real
desire to die – can be granted. Except they don’t really want to die really do
they?

Michael June 14, 2011 at 20:09

Dr. House on Dying with Dignity:

There’s no such thing! Our bodies break down, sometimes when we’re 90,
sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens and there’s never any
dignity in it. I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your ass. It’s always
ugly – always! We can live with dignity – we can’t die with it.

VanDee June 27, 2011 at 18:24

My first reaction was, “So the only ‘dignity’ comes from physical
perfection and complete independence – and those of us unlucky enough not to
have that can never be ‘dignified’? What an ugly thing for the character to
say!”

THEN I realized that the character of House is a twisted, bitter
misanthrope, and that he operates in near-constant pain barely suppressed by
pills.

And that furthermore, despite the pain, he still chooses to carry on
living.

Not sure where this fits into the whole euthanasia debate, just a
suggestion that House may not be the best character to quote here.

Joe Public June 14, 2011 at 19:51

Another thought – provoking article Anna.

However, there is still a section of our society who desperately wish not
to be a burden on their relatives / friends / society. Of those, those who are
no longer in control of (all) their faculties feel a tremendous sense of guilt
at their very survival, and some, a very small percentage equate his to a
(cost) burden on the NHS. Unable to solve the dilemma themselves, they request
assistance.

It can be equally hard to say ‘No – you must persevere’.

Psychonaut99
June 14, 2011 at 19:45

I’m with Richard on this. If it were asked of me, unprompted, by a friend
or relative who had nothing more to look forward to than intolerable pain and
indignity for months on end, I think I’d help, and I think I’d feel OK about.
And I don’t think I’d consider them selfish for asking.

The issue about undue pressure is a valid one though. Once it becomes
permitted, it creates the risk of it then becoming expected for the sick and
infirm to tidily do away with themselves.

No easy answers on this one, but if I was pushed I think I’d fall on the
side of allowing it.

electro-kevin
June 14, 2011 at 19:00

We wouldn’t call on the services of Dignitas if there were similar
here.

I don’t want to live to the point that I can no longer play my guitar – let
alone to the point that someone else is wiping my bottom.

People are now living well into their nineties now; not because they want
to but because they can. Because medical science can keep the body functioning
long after the mind has given up.

The World cannot afford this. Society cannot afford this. Families cannot
afford this.

It was never the quid pro quo that children should look after infirm and
demented parents (more dependant than babies and toddlers) for twenty
years.

Whatever your beliefs things have moved on apace and have created new
problems and I would not impose myself in this way on my own children given
the chance to end it all at a good moment.

We treat animals better to be honest.

Geo June 14, 2011 at 18:47

Will they crave it? Yes some will, I watched my father die of cancer. It
took 11 months and he begged for release for the last 2 months, 8 weeks of
indescribable agony, 24 / 7. To my eternal shame I did not help him. The pain
management and palliative care ceases to work, the dosage of painkillers
cannot be increased without causing death, your dignity is shredded, double
incontinence, bed ridden, no quality of life and from that point only death
can give you ease. Those left behind? Well I for one cannot forget nor forgive
the part I played in prolonging the suffering of one I love. I prey that when
my time comes we have a better system, more compassionate.

binao June 14, 2011 at 18:42

I cared for my very much loved wife until her death at home after years of
serious illness.
I still cannot get out of my head the final days and
hours, but could I have helped her to die? Never.
I couldn’t do it and I
don’t even want to think that someone else would.
Improving end of life
caring is the way forward here, for the mind as well as the body.

Dave H June 14, 2011 at 18:19

I have mixed feelings on it. I did get to the point when my mother had
terminal cancer and was pretty much out of it that I wanted her to go before
she dragged my father down with her. At that point I would have gritted my
teeth and pressed the button if she’d left instructions requesting that it be
pushed. We’d discussed many times the hypothetical car accident and being a
vegetable dependent on life support, and had all agreed that we’d prefer that
it was switched off if we were the vegetable. I’ve also had a family friend,
who was fully aware and in command of her senses, but with insufficient lung
capacity due to cancer to live without a tube down her throat shoving oxygen
in, who decided that she wanted the machines switched off. They put her to
sleep, switched it off and she suffocated and died in her sleep. However, that
is covered under the rules of refusing treatment, and is more refusal of
assisted living than assisted suicide.

However, I’m more concerned with the other side, where it is the carers, be
they family or state, that put undue pressure on sick people to consent
because it will be ‘better for everyone’. That is the point at which it
becomes state sanctioned murder and I can’t see a way to manage a decent
system where the safeguards are adequate but not offensive.

Pete June 14, 2011 at 18:07

It’s a little like abortion… it’s good to know the option is there if you
really REALLY want or need it. It never is going to be easy for those around
the situation. For those that are anti, there’s always the slow drawn out
death with several days of Cheyne-Stokes respiration and diamorphine. I
wouldn’t have any issue with anyone close to me, and to death, suffering, and
assisting. When my time is up… pump in the morphine baby No
two situations are ever the same.

Bob June 14, 2011 at 19:34

Ah yes, assisted suicide, its a little like abortion?
Only its not in
the least like abortion really. There is a simple matter of whose choice is
it?
With abortion, it is the carer (mother) who decides that this
wonderfully viable life is a damned nuisance and should be killed off
asap.
If we could possibly ask the baby’s opinion whether it wanted to go
down the Dignitas route, then, and only then, there might be a
comparison.

For assisted suicide to be like abortion, we would be only consulting the
carer wouldn’t we? Forget the patient, it has nothing to do with him does
it?

For a nation which is happy to kill millions of helpless babies, there is
a stark warning in drawing the abortion/assisted suicide comparison.
How
many generations will pass before Parliament, with the same cold heart,
creates a law permitting any relative, or local authority, or medic, to
dispose of all who are just too inconvenient or expensive to have
around.
It happened in the Third Reich, watch for the slippery slope.

Do not dismiss the slippery slope which connects ALL these

Zaphod June 17, 2011 at 23:04

The obvious connection between assisted suicide and abortion, is that
neither of them are any of your business.

Matt June 14, 2011 at 17:57

This worries me. So lucky you your arms hands shoulders knees feet legs
neck eyes all work fine. But for whatever reason you decide you have had
enough. You can walk to the garden shed for weedkiller. Stretch up to the
medicine cupboard for pills, bend under the kitchen sink for bleach, select
lift and grasp a knife. Suicide is easy.

Or none of the above. You have a full time carer who should do as asked. Or
do they say–no you can’t have a cr*p you had one this morning. Or –no you
can’t have a bath you had one last year. So they would say–no you can’t kill
your self cos thats my job gone.

This seems like the ultimate discrimination against the disabled to me. The
people in society who need most help are to be denied the final help they will
probably crave when the end has been reached. Cruel very cruel.
Please God
not me and if you can manage it cut it out now for everyone, you’ve made your
point.

JuliaM June 14,
2011 at 18:01

” The people in society who need most help are to be denied the final
help they will probably crave when the end has been reached. “

But why will they crave it?

The answer to poor care is better care, and better oversight of that
care, not ‘Oh, sod it, hand me the pills!’…

gladiolys
June 14, 2011 at 21:15

All the care in the world won’t prevent the pain of some conditions.
Death is preferable for some people when it’s inevitable anyway.

This was a powerful piece of writing Anna and I take your point about
asking your carer to take responsibility. Is it naive of me to expect
Advance Directives and Powers of Attorney to be of any use?

Richard June 14, 2011 at 17:48

If my best and dearest friend asked it of me I’d be proud and honoured to
help in any way I could.