SHOULD MEDICS BE ABLE TO HELP TERMINALLY-ILL PATIENTS DIE?

MY husband Steven died on Saturday. He was 70 and had been suffering for quite a few years, gradually deteriorating.

He had vascular dementia and the last thing to go was his swallowing, so he was not able to eat or drink.

The last food Steven had was on December 28 at home. Then on New Year’s Day he had his last fluids and it was decided to let him die. He received end of life care and we sat there for 11 days, watching him die. It was horrendous.

The doctors at Pinderfields Hospital in

Says Geraldine Backhouse

Wakefield did their best to make Steven comfortable in his final days. But when the doctors know he’s going to die, why does it have to go on for so long?

If we had the choice, I think we would have wanted Steven to be assisted. It would still have been terrible, but at least we would have had the option. CHANGING the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia is opposed by every major disability rights organisation, because it would treat disabled people and the sick differently in law from the able-bodied and healthy.

As Baroness Grey-Thompson, the Paralympian, said: “Legalising assisted suicide will only serve to reinforce deep-seated prejudices that the lives of sick and disabled people aren’t worth as much as other people’s.”

All other doctors’ groups recognise

Says Alistair Thompson

physician-assisted dying is not hastening the dying process, but using medication to bring about a death prematurely and have rightly rejected this.

We are confident members of the Royal College of Physicians will also reach this view and oppose any attempt to change the law.