No-lockdown Lord: Cancer victim’s life is less valuable
LOCKDOWN opponent and former supreme court judge Lord Sumption told a bowel cancer sufferer her life was ‘less valuable’ than other people’s.
The peer, 72, said in a TV debate on the human cost of Covid restrictions: ‘All lives are not of equal value – the older you are, the less valuable yours is because there’s less of it left.’
Deborah James, 39 – known as the Bowel Babe and host of the BBC’s You, Me And The Big C podcast – told him: ‘With all due respect, I’m the person who you say their life is not valuable. I live with metastatic bowel cancer.’
Lord Sumption interrupted Ms James and said: ‘I didn’t say your life was not valuable, I said it was less valuable.’
The teacher and mum of two, who has had 17 tumours, replied: ‘Who are you to put a value on life?
‘In my view, and I think in many others, life is sacred and I don’t think we should make those judgment calls.
‘All life is worth saving regardless of what life it is people are living.
‘Only six weeks ago I was in intensive care for a cancer operation that has got me back up on my feet and without that I wouldn’t be here.
‘And we have to protect the NHS to allow the collateral to be as minimal on all health conditions as possible.’
Host Nicky Campbell had asked guests on BBC One’s The Big Questions show whether lockdown was ‘punishing too many for the greater good’.
Last October, Lord Sumption, who until 2018 sat on the Supreme Court, accused ministers of keeping Britons ‘under a form of house arrest’.
The peer has said: ‘I do not doubt the seriousness of the epidemic but history will look back on the measures taken as a monument of collective hysteria and governmental folly.’