[Right_to_die] Lord Joffe: Letter to The Times

[World right-to-die news (nonprofit)]

October 30, 2008
Debbie Purdy deserves a less terrible choice

Parliament must legalise assisted dying and not be deflected by the small
minority who refuse a calm debate

by Joel Joffe

There can be no better evidence of the urgent need to change the law on
assisted dying than the ruling made yesterday by the High Court on the
case of Debbie Purdy.

Ms Purdy, a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis, brought a case to
clarify the law on assisted suicide. She wanted to ensure that if she
travelled with her husband to a Swiss clinic to end her life, he would not
be prosecuted on his return to Britain.

The law as it stands means that if her husband does accompany her he may
be prosecuted if the Director of Public Prosecutions decides that there is
sufficient evidence and it is in the public's interest to do so. But so
far there have been no prosecutions of the relatives of the 101 British
citizens who have gone to the Dignitas clinic.

The judges said that although they have every sympathy with Ms Purdy they
cannot help her to clarify the law. The courts can give her no guidance
even if it means that she will have to take her life earlier than she
would wish, while she is still healthy enough to travel alone to
Switzerland. What a terrible dilemma for Ms Purdy and her husband that
this should be the law.

It is not only Ms Purdy who faces this dilemma. There are many others who
feel that travelling abroad to die is a gentler way of death than the
choices that are available in Britain, but who cannot do so for financial
reasons or the sheer physical impossibility of their making an arduous
journey.

The only other legal option is to commit suicide. But a botched suicide
attempt increases the suffering of already sick people. There are also
mercy killings and some doctors do illegally assist their patients to die
out of compassion, but they do so at great risk to their careers and, in
some cases, their freedom.

The solution is clearly a change in the law to allow mentally competent,
terminally ill adults the option to end their life in their own home with
the assistance of their caring doctors. This is what the Assisted Dying
for the Terminally Ill Bill that we introduced in the House of Lords in
2005 would have achieved. In drafting the Bill we recognised that we had a
duty not only to allow terminally ill people to make their own decisions
about their own lives, but we also had a duty to protect vulnerable
people.

This required that we included an array of safeguards before the patient
made a final decision. The process, as the Bill envisaged it, would begin
with a written request to his or her doctor for assistance to die.
Thereafter the patient would have to undergo a consultation with two
doctors, one of whom must be an independent consultant.

If either of the doctors had concerns about the patient's mental
competence he or she would be referred to a psychiatrist. There would also
be a minimum period of 14 days for reflection. And recognising the
importance of palliative care, the patient would also have to consult a
palliative care specialist.

It was only after all these and other safeguards were met that patients
could make a final written request to a doctor willing to prescribe
medication to end their life. The patient - not the doctor - would
administer the drugs.

The Bill was based on the law in Oregon in the United States, where
assisted dying has been lawful for ten years and where there has been no
credible evidence of abuse. The Bill included more safeguards than the
Oregon legislation.

Why then was there such opposition to assisted dying? The answer is that a
small minority of the population - probably under 20 per cent - largely
under the influence of their religious leaders, sought to impose their
beliefs on the 80 per cent of the population who supported assisted dying
and who did not share their beliefs.

The Bill did not in any way seek to interfere with the rights of any of
this small minority to die in any way they choose, nor did it seek to
encourage any of the majority to ask for assistance to die. It simply
aimed to provide an additional end-of-life option to the existing choices
- chiefly of palliative care, but also of refusing medical treatment or of
patients starving themselves to death.

The leading article in The Times last Saturday was in tune with public
opinion when it called for the Bill to have another reading. When a new
Bill is introduced I hope the debate will not abound with misleading and
emotive buzz phrases such as “care not killing”, or references to the
Holocaust or the religious objections of the minority. Rather, I hope that
it will be a calm, rational debate that focuses on the safeguards
necessary to protect the vulnerable, and the need to ensure that every
mentally competent terminally ill person has a right to die at a time and
in a way he or she chooses.

Sadly, however, the last thing the opponents of assisted dying seem to
want is a debate. This was shown by their conduct at the last hearing of
my Bill when they broke a longstanding tradition in the Lords of never
opposing a Private Member's Bill at second reading. They succeeding in
summarily bringing the debate to an end before a detailed examination of
its provisions could even take place.

This week Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, stated
that if this issue is to be resolved it should be done so by Parliament.
This was echoed in yesterday's judgment. In the words of Lord Justice
Scott Baker and Mr Justice Aikens: “The offence of assisted suicide is
very widely drawn to cover all manner of different circumstance; only
Parliament can change it.”

I respectfully agree. Opinion polls consistently show that the
overwhelming majority of the public support change. For the law to change
the voices of the silent majority must be heard. We should all draw
courage from Debbie Purdy.

Lord Joffe is a human rights lawyer

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5042217.ece