Let’s not all capitulate to a counsel of despair

ON Friday the 22nd of this month the Assisted Dying Bill, introduced by Baroness Meacher, will receive its second reading in the House of Lords. This Bill, if successful, will make it possible for patients, described as terminally ill, who wish to end their lives to receive assistance to that effect from a physician licensed to administer a lethal drug.

Undergoing major surgery some years ago deepened my understanding of how patients who wish to end their lives feel. It is nonetheless a seriously disordered state of mind and can easily be caused by clinical depression which may itself pass. Everything living wishes to live, and animals don’t take their own lives. The solution is to do everything possible to help patients out of this state of mind, enabling them to see all the light in their existence, rather than capitulate to a radically life-denying counsel of despair.

Many people don’t seem to realise either that a person assisting someone to take their own lives would necessarily be complicit in his or her death. If I have no right to kill another, what right do I have to enable him to kill himself by administering a lethal drug?

People like Baroness Meacher who are persistently pushing for the legalisation of assisted dying are living in the hope that the public will one day come round to accepting it as inevitable.

People opposed to the Bill can contact the relevant lord or lady at the House of Lords and question them regarding their position.

Dr R Iestyn Daniel (retired) Waunfawr, Aberystwyth

Everything living wishes to live, and animals don’t take their own lives

R Iestyn Daniel Aberystwyth