I fear euthanasia is open to abuse
EVERY sympathy must be extended to Henry Marsh, a top brain surgeon with advanced prostate cancer. But I can’t support his call — along with Humanists UK and My Death, My Decision, of which Mr Marsh is a patron — for an inquiry into assisted dying (Mail). He ignores previous parliamentary inquiries that found against legalising assisted suicide. The arguments against legalisation are firmly based on the abuses against the vulnerable that have arisen in every jurisdiction that has legalised assisted dying — always with ‘strict safeguards’ that are promptly discarded after the measure has passed into law. Critics of assisted suicide do not fear debate. To the contrary, we want the terrible outcomes of legalisation to be debated openly rather than sidelined in favour of emotive and frightening stories about people needing the ‘right to die’. People can already choose not to be treated if they so wish. Though it is now legal to break the Covid lockdown to visit Switzerland to commit suicide, those in favour of assisted dying have complained to the Justice Secretary that helping another person to do this attracts a sentence of 14 years in jail under the Suicide Act. This 1961 law forbade such ‘assistance’ for the very good reason that not a day goes by without people murdering or attempting to murder their friends and loved ones. Under the law, no one can claim their victim chose to be killed. Legally allowing physicians to offer patients a lethal injection or drugs would inevitably change the ethos of their profession from one of caring to one of killing. If a recent poll was accurate in finding that half of doctors believe there should be a change in the law to allow patients to be prescribed life-ending drugs, that is a matter not for comfort, but great concern.
Ann FARMER, Woodford Green, Essex.
MY MOTHER spent the last two years of her life in excruciating agony pleading for help to end her life. A change in the law to allow people to decide for themselves the way they want to leave this life is long overdue. More countries are accepting it is for the individual and not doctors or the legal profession to decide their fate.
TONY SHIELD, Bury, Gtr Manchester.