Contrasting Deaths

The death of Lynda Bellingham was a real shock even though, through her dignified publicising of her cancer, we all knew that she was terminally ill. I am just so sad that she didn't get what she so desperately wanted, a last Christmas with her family. We can only pray that she is now at peace.

Like millions I grew up with Lynda Bellingham making the world's best gravy. I love my mum and wouldn't swap her for the world, but when I was a kid if I had to choose another mum it would have been Lynda Bellingham. Even away from the Oxo adverts she came over as a thoroughly good, decent human being. The world needs more of them, not less.

In 1970 I lost my grandad. He took his own life within weeks of my gran dying. For a long time I had extremely negative feelings for what he had put us all through so soon after overcoming the grief of my gran dying. A pain felt even more by my mum and her sister and brother.

After time I came to love and respect my granddad even more than I had when he was alive. As I matured I understood that pain and loss had driven him to do what he had done. He had the guts to do it and not expect anybody else to help him or to give their permission. He took the ultimate responsibility, that of choosing when to die.

By contrast I read today of 86 year old Jean Davies who took four weeks to starve herself to death. Even after giving up water as well as food it took her two weeks to die. It sounded slightly odd to me.

Lo and behold for many years Jean Davies had been a campaigner for 'assisted suicide'. So what terrible illness led to Jean Davies's suicide? She had a lot of ailments, was on a lot of tablets and had started to faint sometimes. In other words she was 'knocking on a bit'.

It seems that she was terrified of fainting in her garden, dying and putting her family through the trauma of finding her dead. So instead she chose to have her family witness her lingering, one month indignity of starving to death.

Well she certainly made me even more convinced that euthanasia is wrong and if legalised, would be every bit as abused as the abortion laws are. We now have abortion on demand. Legalise euthanasia and oldies will soon be put down to free up the spare room or the granny flat. Well I want neither abortion nor euthanasia in my name and will continue to campaign against both. It seems the liberal left only oppose the death of the guilty by campaigning constantly against capital punishment. But they are happy to slaughter the innocent be they young or old.

I think the world became slightly the poorer for losing Lynda Bellingham and Johnny Hardy. I hope I don't sound uncharitable, but I can't say the same about the death of Jean Davies.

Legalised Killing

Driving into Lancaster this morning the big lead story on the BBC informed us that an influential committee had produced a report supporting the introduction of euthanasia. But it turned out that the report had been commissioned and drawn up by a group of people who support the introduction of euthanasia anyway. Hardly a hard hitting, objective and independent report then.

The supporters of euthanasia love to talk in euphemisms, it doesn't sound like killing people then, and cry that they are the truly passionate, whereas those of us who believe that human life is sacred are happy to see people die horrific lingering deaths, which is obviously untrue, there is a wonderful thing called palliative care. Care Not Killing has the humane position on the issue and an excellent counter to today's pro-death report.

Just remember that we now have abortion on demand, despite all the safeguards promised when it was legalised in this country. Already the influential euthanasia campaigner Baroness Warnock has called for the euthanasia of the elderly with dementia to free up NHS resources so I'd campaign against if I were you, or be very nervous about what people regard as 'elderly' and beyond worth wasting NHS resources on when you get a bit older.

In addition I question, yet again, the objectivity of a broadcaster that I'm forced to fund through my taxes. It clearly has an agenda on this issue, as we all know it does on many issues so time to be rid of the BBC I think.

Assisted Suicide On TV

I didn't watch the documentary Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die last night, I watched it this morning instead. Or rather I watched most of it this morning. When it came to it I couldn't watch the final part, where the man with Motor Neurone Disease took his poison in the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.

I'm not particularly squeamish, I have been with somebody when they died, and have visited deceased loved ones in chapels of rest, but this seemed too deep to be watching on TV. It felt as though I were just watching another episode of a soap opera. I slightly surprised myself, but it seemed so undignified to sit watching Mr Smedley die, especially after I had been so impressed by his dignity throughout the rest of the programme. I didn't expect to feel that way when I sat down to watch.

Something I did find disturbing in the build up to the programme were the constant references to people with MND and the way they die. The overwhelming majority die peaceful deaths and do not die by choking to death or suffocating. I worked with people with MND for eight years and many find it extremely disturbing when they see programmes such as last night's. I heard many people in the aftermath of programmes such as that state that their lives were going to be cut short because of MND, and they did not want to shorten it still further. Others felt depressed that these programmes make their lives out to be worthless and that they have no value because of their disability. Sadly that side of the debate was not aired last night.

Having a loved one commit suicide can devastate individuals and families left behind. People often feel that they could have done more to help their loved one. There can be a sense that the person who committed suicide had been selfish and inflicted more pain on those left behind than if they had died naturally. Families can be split apart with a sense of guilt, shock or any of the other countless feelings and emotions inevitable when something as huge as that affects them. None of this was considered in last night's programme. Those feelings would be there, I believe, whether the person dies in a clinic in Zurich, or a bedroom in London. Legalising suicide, or legalising assisited suicide, would not take away the pain for those left behind.

My other problem with the programme was that the presenter was Terry Pratchett. If the BBC wanted to be impartial in looking at the issue of assisted suicide, I do not think using a man with Alzheimer's is particularly impartial or objective, especially as it was clear from the start what Terry Pratchett's position was. I'm not criticising the man himself for that, rather the programme makers and the BBC. Although I did find his comment about having to travel to Switzerland to die inconvenient and costly fatuous in the extreme.

Like legalising abortion I feel that legalising assisted suicide would be the thin end of the wedge. It would begin being an option in extreme cases, but who knows where it would end?  The frightening statistic that was quoted last night was that 21% of those dying in the Zurich clinic do not have terminal or incurable diseases at all, they were described as 'weary of life'. Rather takes away the 'oh it won't be used in cases like that' argument already.

My position on this issue is the same as those who marched against the war in Iraq, not in my name, and legalising assisted suicide would be exactly that. The only thing we know with absolute certainty is that one day we will die, and when  my time comes I want it to happen naturally. There seems something terribly soulless about a society that does not put child murderers to death, but sanctions the killing of the sick, the terminally ill and the unborn.

I don't think last night's programme contributed anything to the debate about assisted suicide, it certainly didn't raise any issues that haven't been debated over and over again. What the BBC is very good at is producing sensationalist programmes and patronisingly claiming that is in the public interest. In that respect last night's programme was very BBC.

Gordon Brown-Assisted Suicide

No, I'm not about to suggest legalising assisted suicide so we can see Gordon Brown off, tempting though that may be. I am actually referring to an article I was pleased to read in today's Telegraph by Gordon Brown opposing the legalisation of assisted suicide.

Over a million people marched against the Iraq war carrying placards proclaiming 'Not In My Name', where are they now? Would you be happy to lie in a hospital bed and have some pillock like Ray Gosling, or anybody else for that matter, creep in and smother you with a pillow then, years later go on TV sobbing like a fourth rate Hollywood actor telling the world how he committed murder, your murder? If indeed Gosling did commit murder and isn't just on some mad PR stunt to sell his book.

Why do so many people oppose the death penalty for child murderers, but want the state to introduce it for the sick or terminally ill? At the moment I am pretty healthy, and share the view of many terminally ill people I have met through my work, that a terminal illness is cutting short a life so why cut it even shorter?

Having said that I am not terminally ill. Faced with a long painful death I might think differently. If that day came I would discuss it with my wife, and vice versa as we have already discussed in very general terms, and we would then agree on a course of action. We would then take responsibility and, if it came to it, hope that whichever one of us was left behind would be treated mercifully by the authorities. That would be our decision, it would be up to us to deal with it and we would not hide behind the state, or want our action to be approved by the state.

The last thing we need is the nationalisation of death.

Assisted Suicide

Debbie Purdy has failed in her attempt to have the law on assisted suicide changed, she fears that if her husband helps her to visit the Swiss clinic, run by Dignitas, he may face prosecution when he returns after her suicide. She has a particularly aggressive form of Multiple Sclerosis. The judge stated that it was a question for parliament not the courts.

An average of two Britons each year travel to Switzerland to die in the way they choose, and until now nobody has faced prsecution upon return to the UK. However it seems that the family of the young rugby player who went there to die after being paralysed are being investigated by the CPS.

Part of the problem is deciding what constitutes assisting a suicide. Buying a plane ticket to Switzerland for your loved one? Holding his or her hand while they die? It doesn't have to actually be as stark as giving them the lethal dose of drugs.

The question of assisted suicide crops up on a regular basis and, while I believe it to be wrong, I have every sympathy for those who feel it to be their only option. What I do not want is for the law to be changed so that we, society, are consenting to people commiting suicide. I am extremely sympathetic to the authorities turning a blind eye in cases where it is obvious that the person who went to Switzerland was was fully aware of what they were doing and made the decision themselves. To hold the hand of a loved one as they die, be it suicide or not, should not be a prosecutable offence.

For several years I worked for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and a few years ago a Liverpool man with MND went to Switzerland to die. This caused a huge media furore similar to that this week around Debbie Purdy. I saw the other side of the impact this had on people living with MND. At that time nobody with MND that I spoke to wanted to take that route themselves. Most of them had the view that their lives were being cut short becaue of MND and they didn't want to shorten it any further. Many people with MND and their families found the whole thing terribly distressing. That side of the argument is rarely covered by the press.

As with any of these things there are reactions and repercusions for years to come that affect those left behind after a suicide. Could I have done more? Could I have encouraged him/her to stay a few more weeks or months? What about the immense feeling of guilt that may be faced by the loved one left behind? I've no doubt people like Debbie Purdy will be discussing all these things with her husband. But we need to be very careful that we look deeper than the media coverage that makes it all sound so clean and compartmentalised.

One of the more worrying aspects of this recent publicity is the position of Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas. It seems he wants the option of suicide extending beyond the terminally ill to people such as manic depressives. As ever one of the worrying things about legalising assisted suicide is how it would then extend into areas for which the original law was never intended.

And finally, we no longer tolerate the state taking the life of murderers so it seems to me even less acceptable for the state to condone the taking of innocent life whether by your own hand or not.