Chris Barron

Is this another symptom of the government’s insistence on regulating every single aspect of our lives, even how we choose to die? No, it is not. But we have got rules and policies in every sphere of our lives, and this is about what we believe healthcare should be all about. It is not about regulating each and every aspect of our lives. We don’t just wake up and want to regulate each and every aspect of people’s lives. We look at the goals and objectives and our targets in health. What are your goals? The main thing is that our understanding, which is also held by international bodies in health like the World Health Organisation, is that doctors must not be looked upon as people who can kill. They are not supposed to be people who can kill. We don’t even want it to come into their minds that the law supports them on the issue of killing. Doctors can kill you any time if they wish to, they have the access and capacity to kill you whether you’ve got cancer or what. If they want to remove you, they can. But they’ve not been doing so because it is embedded in their minds that they can’t do that. What are you afraid might happen if the law gives them the right to allow a terminally ill patient to die, if that is what the patient wants? This is not about allowing patients to die, it’s about killing them. Because doctors do allow people to die. It’s been happening for centuries. We are not talking about doctors allowing anybody to die, we’re talking about doctors actively killing them. Aren’t we talking about people who are dying and want a doctor to allow them to die with as little pain as possible? We don’t believe that is what doctors are all about. The idea of helping somebody who is terminal, we are emphasising, as does the WHO of which we are an affiliate, that the way to do this is through palliative care. Palliative care provides relief from pain and regards dying as a normal process that should be neither hastened nor postponed. We believe strong, and enough, palliative care achieves everything that this judgment wanted to achieve. Isn’t helping people to die without pain palliative care? No. Palliative care is providing relief from pain. Isn’t this exactly what people who support assisted dying want doctors to be allowed to do? To provide relief from their pain? We don’t provide it by killing them. When you kill somebody you are not relieving them from pain, you are ending their life. We are talking about relieving their pain while they are still alive. Such that they live the rest of their lives pain-free. That is what palliative care means and that is what we are pushing for. We don’t believe this sudden story that is just emerging. We believe it is just some form of liberalism. Individual liberalism, where we say that the constitution allows anybody to do anything they want. One day you want to smoke dagga, another day you want to die. That’s not what we are all about. Are you denying that the constitution gives us the right to dignity? I am going to ask people who were in the Constitutional Assembly if, when parliament under Nelson Mandela put the word “dignity” [in the constitution], they meant that. Because here it looks like “dignity” is suddenly translated into “death”— that death is the only way you can provide somebody with dignity. I don’t want to believe that. There seems to be an argument that the only way you can do that is by killing them. Isn’t it ironic that people who are desperate to live are being killed because your hospitals are a disgrace, but you want to force those who . . . Because our hospitals are a disgrace we must put it in the law that we must kill people? You don’t have to, they’re being killed because of appalling conditions. And I am trying to work every day to change those conditions. But I am not about to allow it to become law that killing is now allowed because there are appalling conditions and people are dying in hospital therefore we can put it into the law that it’s OK to kill. If you feel so strongly about palliative care, why isn’t your government doing more to support hospitals and hospices that offer these services? It’s in our plans. This is why we are calling for NHI [National Health Insurance] so we can move towards universal health coverage. Meanwhile you’re saying those in pain must get palliative care, knowing that your government simply isn’t doing enough to make it accessible? I will accept that. At the moment. If the judge had judged us harshly on that and said we are not giving enough palliative care and ruled that “I’m giving you so many weeks, you must put your house in order”, I will have accepted that judgment. Rather than to say because we are failing to give palliative care then you must kill. No.