Choosing to die: presented by Terry Pratchett on BBC2

Choosing to die: This TV programme shown yesterday and presented by Sir Terry Pratchett was a sensitive and timely consideration of assisted suicide. It had special poignancy because of Sir Terry's own condition of early Alzheimer's Disease. The programme concentrated on giving an airing to the reasons why two men, unrelated except that they were suffering, each chose to go to Dignitas, in Zurich, to have paid-for assistance to die before their suffering became too great to bear. Peter Smedley had Motor Neurone Disease, an incurable and progressive condition. The other, Andrew Colgan, had Multiple Sclerosis, also incurable and progressive. The hour-long programme is available on iPlayer for another 6 days.

Sir Terry travelled to Zurich, and he and we, the viewers, were privileged to watch Mr Smedley's death, with his loving and beloved wife of forty years by his side, and it certainly looked to me a kindly death compared with the alternative of long-drawn-out suffering.

I have been dismayed and shocked, though not surprised, at the volume of criticism the programme has attracted. As ever, there are people who wilfully conflate the personal choice of death in order to put an end to pain/indignity/suffering and the decision by someone else that another person should die. A 'slippery slope' is always envisaged that must be guarded against, however much agony that causes the people who have to bear the unbearable. I was personally incensed by the former Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, saying on Radio 4 this morning that pain can always be controlled. - This is completely untrue and it is disgraceful that such untruths are perpetuated by Christians and others, especially doctors. It is all too easy for some to bear another's pain/trivialise it/offer simplistic solutions that do not work. "He jests at scars that never felt a wound."

I welcome MSP Margo MacDonald's bill aiming to give terminally ill people the right to assisted suicide

BBC News carries a report on this, in which it says, "A bill aiming to give terminally ill people the right to die has been published at the Scottish Parliament. MSP Margo MacDonald, who has Parkinson's disease, brought the bill to make it legal for someone to seek help to end their life. It is not illegal to attempt suicide in Scotland - but helping someone take their own life is against the law."

Many people oppose the aim of this bill, partly because they fear that vulnerable people might be bullied/persuaded into ending their lives to please someone else, but a series of safeguards are proposed, to prevent abuse of the legislation, should it become law. I believe that when life has become intolerably painful and/or in other ways too burdensome to continue to bear, then provision such as is intended by this bill, would be a kindness to suffering individuals and not a threat to society.

Relatives of people in assisted suicide cases will not face prosecution as long as they do not maliciously encourage them to kill themselves.

See Telegraph report.

I'm in favour of this new guidance. What I'm not in favour of is when medical and/or nursing staff kill patients by giving them morphine and other such drugs, pretending that their object is the relief of pain, when the real intention is to hasten death.

More Britons are going to Zurich to end their lives when life has become intolerable for them.

The right to choose death - Independent

This is a long article and well worth reading in its entirety.

Extract:

"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.""