[Right_to_die] Plea for law reform in Britain on assisted suicide

[org.opn.lists.right-to-die at lists.opn.org]

The Independent newspaper in London carried this commentary:

			The right to choose death

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
  08 May 2007

The number of terminally ill people travelling from Britain to end their 
lives in a Swiss assisted suicide clinic has doubled in the past year.

In protest at what they see as Britain's outdated euthanasia laws, 
patients from the UK are flocking to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich where 
they are promised a dignified death.

Latest figures show 34 people have made the journey since January 2006 
compared with an average of 14 a year between January 2003 and January 
2006. In all, 76 Britons have been helped to take their own lives by 
drinking a mixture of barbiturates prepared by doctors at the clinic.

The trend will give added impetus to the campaign to change the law in 
Britain to give terminally ill patients the right to choose how and when 
they end their lives. Surveys show four out of five people in the UK 
would support a form of assisted suicide similar to that offered at the 
Dignitas clinic, but three attempts to change the law since 2003 have 
failed.

Dignitas was set up in 1998 by Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss human rights 
lawyer, to help people "live and die with dignity". The first known 
British patient to visit the clinic was Reginald Crew, a 74-year-old 
former car worker from Liverpool with motor neurone disease, who ended 
his life there in January in 2003. One unnamed Briton had gone there to 
die earlier. In Britain the penalty for assisting a suicide is up to 14 
years in prison. Many relatives and friends who have travelled with 
terminally ill patients to Zurich have lived in fear of prosecution 
afterwards.

Rosie Brocklehurst, of Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary 
Euthanasia Society, which campaigns for a change to the law in the UK, 
said: "It is appalling that the current law in the UK means that 
terminally ill British people who want to end their lives are being 
forced to travel to a strange country to do so. Their lives are being 
ended more prematurely than would otherwise be necessary because they 
have to be able to travel."

Sheila Soul-Gray, a university administrator from east London, made the 
journey with her family and ended her life at Dignitas last December. 
Aged 53, she had terminal colon cancer and viewed the opportunity of 
release from her suffering with "extraordinary relief", according to her 
husband, Martyn.

Mr Soul-Gray, a teacher, said: "I felt cross we had to make this 
difficult journey, in public. Sheila would have preferred to die at home 
in familiar surroundings with her things around her as we all would. 
That would have been by far the best. It should be an absolute human right."

The acceleration in the numbers of people going to Switzerland was 
revealed by Dignity in Dying, to mark the fifth anniversary this week 
(11 May) of the death of Diane Pretty, who campaigned for the right to 
euthanasia. She fought a two-year legal battle to win immunity from 
prosecution for her husband, Brian, should he help her to commit suicide.

Mrs Pretty had motor neurone disease, a degenerative condition which 
left her confined to a wheelchair and threatened to condemn her to a 
painful and distressing death. The Director of Public Prosecutions 
agreed that Mrs Pretty and her family were experiencing "terrible 
suffering" but refused to grant her immunity. Mrs Pretty appealed but 
lost her case before the Law Lords and, subsequently, in the European 
Court of Human Rights. She died in a hospice near her home two weeks 
after her case was thrown out. A spokeswoman for Dignity in Dying said 
Brian Pretty had been upset by the way some Christian groups had claimed 
she died a peaceful death. "The truth is that before she was heavily 
sedated [at the end] Diane had anything but a peaceful last few days and 
was in a great deal of pain," he said.

Surveys show that many people, especially those with religious 
convictions, claim they do not fear death and would never end their own 
lives prematurely. But doctors point out that death is a process, not an 
event, and for those with terminal diseases it may involve a period of 
pain and suffering which is hard to bear. Although palliative medicine 
has advanced to the point where most (but not all) terminally ill 
patients can be helped to die peacefully, some want to shorten the 
process and die with dignity.

Terminally ill patients wishing to travel to Switzerland from the UK 
must first become members of Dignitas and then supply detailed 
paperwork, including medical records, to satisfy the doctors at the 
clinic that there is no hope of recovery and their decision has been 
taken freely and without coercion.

Once they arrive at the clinic - in an anonymous apartment block in a 
Zurich suburb - they are given a private medical consultation in which 
they can express any last-minute doubts - before the cocktail of 
barbiturates is prepared.

The patient then drinks the cocktail, using a straw if they are too 
disabled to raise the glass to their lips, so that the fatal dose of 
drugs is self-administered. This distinguishes assisted suicide, which 
is not a criminal offence in Switzerland as it is in Britain, from 
euthanasia, where the fatal dose is administered by the doctor. Minutes 
after drinking the cocktail the patient slips into a sleep followed 
rapidly by coma and death.

The last attempt to change the law in Britain sought to legalise 
assisted suicide for terminallyill patients with less than six months to 
live. The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill bill sponsored by Lord 
Joffe was defeated one year ago on May 12 2006. Lord Joffe said at the 
time that he was committed to bringing the bill back.

			Assisted death the Swiss way

Dignitas clinic hit the headlines soon after it was founded in the late 
1990s. One of only a few Swiss assisted suicide organisations which 
takes clients from abroad, the controversy surrounding it has not 
stopped a steady stream of terminally ill patients choosing it as the 
place where they wish to die.

Discreetly situated in a block of studio flats in a residential suburb 
of Zurich, Dignitas takes advantage of Switzerland's liberal laws on 
assisted suicide, which say that a person can only be prosecuted if they 
are acting out of self-interest. Staff interpret this to mean that 
anyone who assists suicide altruistically cannot be prosecuted. Its 
specialist staff all work as volunteers to ensure there can be no 
conflict of interest. Once patients become members - and before they 
arrive for their final visit - staff carry out detailed discussions to 
ascertain whether their declarations have been unduly influenced by 
others. Once a decision to carry out the procedure has been made, the 
patient travels to Zurich and is taken to one of the clinic's flats. 
Staff then administer a lethal does of barbiturates.