I would like to point out that an opposition to a change in the law on assisted dying simply perpetuates an injustice of great magnitude, that it effects a small minority of patients with terminal disease is no reason to shirk from the truth. Usually the courageous are those who struggle against the status quo rather than those maintaining it.1 This is amply illustrated by two contrasting and well publicised judgements, that of Ms B,2 a ventilator-dependent woman, the other of Diane Pretty,3 the woman with motor neurone disease who wanted immunity from prosecution for her husband so he could assist in her suicide.
Two points can be drawn from these cases. The first arises when one asks why switching off a ventilator on a ventilator-dependent patient is not consistent with the offence of assisting a suicide? How can a patient request removal of a treatment where the inevitable consequence is death, and this not be regarded as a request for suicide? The answer, in law, lies in an unsupported statement made by Lord Goff in the Bland judgment, ‘I wish to add … there is no question of the patient having committed suicide nor therefore of the doctor having aided or abetted him in doing so’.4
The second point is that both these women were rendered disabled by, from their point of view, a random event. Why should one be allowed her desire for death when the other is discriminated against? Insult can be added to injury for the family of Diane Pretty by a recent case involving a woman, also with an incurable degenerative neurological condition, who had an injunction preventing her leaving the country quashed by the court.5 She needed her husband's help to get to Switzerland so she could be assisted by him in committing suicide. The judge admitted that her husband would be in breach of the Suicide Act by taking her, given that this constitutes aiding, abetting or procuring her suicide, but that he would not recommend prosecution as it would not be in the public interest.
Diane Pretty had no option but to suffer, there may be a lesson to be learnt from Clifts6 mysterious value of suffering, but it will not be found by questioning the patient but in examining the unethical way the law decides who shall be granted their ultimate desire and whom shall not.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2005.