Rob Colquhoun

Euthanasia

Yet again Britain seems to be on the verge of adopting another very anti life and anti Christian piece of legislation with the discussion of Lord Joffe's bill on the assisted dying for the terminally ill bill in October. It appears that this bill is going to be the floodgates bill and even if it does not admit euthanasia but patient assisted suicide (PAS) , it will be another blip on the law, creating an opt out clause in life. The right to life as stated under article 2 of the ECHR (European convention on human rights) precludes any nonsense euthanasia. There is little to regulate euthanasia. No doubt that euthanasia must be happening in Britain at the moment. The most dubious aspect of legalising voluntary Euthanasia or PAS is the reliability of consent: is the person competent and is the decision voluntary? The World Medical Association and the Council of Europe are both firmly opposed to any form of Euthanasia as well as both patients and doctors in the UK. The bill has serious implications for doctor/patient relationships and the element of trust that must exist. It is a wholesale rejection of the Hippocratic tradition in the medical field. We must ask are doctors to be at the service of life, or should the doctors be doctors of death by murdering their patients? A person who wishes to die never constitutes a legal claim or justification to carry out such activity. It will bring profound changes in attitude towards death, old age, illness and doctors. All the safeguards and assurances that the 1967 Abortion act had were ignored to a large extent. Many Dutch elderly patients are too frightened to go to their doctor and choose to go to Germany instead, due to such horrendous laws in Holland. There have even been reports that euthanasia has been performed on infants in Holland and it has gone unchallenged. It may create pressure on the elderly who feel useless to their family to request euthanasia.

The death of the Holy Father John Paul II was a real example of death with dignity. We need to respect and honour the elderly in society rather than plot up techniques of how to get rid of them. Regardless of the increase in numbers of the elderly, the techniques of palliative care are sufficient in dealing with pain. Hard cases make hard law, and to introduce any law trying to introduce a right to death would be a tragedy in Britain. Further liberalisations to this law, if introduced would probably happen and this may be detrimental to the safety and proper care of the elderly in hospitals (as in Holland). An introduction of this bill would be immoral, dangerous and unnecessary. It is immoral because it turns tradition medical ethics upside down and ridicules the right to life established in the ECHR and UNHR (Universal declaration on human rights). It is unnecessary because alternative measures and options exist and it is dangerous because it hampers the concept of autonomy and radically reverses the Hippocratic core of medical work.