EUTHANASIA FANS ARE TELLING THE SAME OLD FIB

THOSE campaigning to legalise euthanasia in this country have taken encouragement from last week’s poll by the British Medical Association, suggesting some movement in its membership towards acceptance of such a policy.

However, the greatest support for the idea came from non-practising medics.

Among those actually in palliative care no less than 70 per cent of active practitioners declared themselves opposed to any change in the law. Those on the side of socalled ‘assisted dying’ rely heavily on the assertion that people are forced by doctors to endure life-preserving treatments against their wishes. This is, to be blunt, either ignorant or dishonest.

Yet it was perpetrated once again last week by a distinguished retired academic in a letter published prominently. Professor Norma Rinsler wrote: ‘My late husband, a retired doctor, endured treatment that he knew to be pointless, and suffered great pain and appalling indignities in his final weeks last year.

‘He wished that the doctors would let him go quietly but knew how unlikely that was. A change in the law would release both doctor and patient from a situation that is illogical and inhumane.’

In fact, doctors have absolutely no power, or right, to impose treatment on patients against their wishes. As the law stands, if a person is of sound mind, he or she can always refuse any medical intervention.

This, for example, is why Jehovah’s Witnesses are entitled to refuse to undergo a blood transfusion (it is forbidden by their religion), even when such a simple and painless procedure would be the only way to save their life.

If the law is changed, it should be based on the facts, not fiction — however much that fiction is propagated and believed.