We are watching the clock, waiting for Keir Starmer, director of Public Prosecutions, to formally present the new guidelines on assisted suicide. And then suddenly it’s eleven o’clock and we’re all in Millbank, where you can’t shake a stick without hitting two reporters, or three if you’re lucky.
For Debbie Purdy and me, the race is on. We pass each other endlessly in lifts and in corridors. It’s like a high-tech slave auction. You stagger around from one TV interview to another and end up not remembering anything about it.
We’re talking about assisted dying. I find out what I think by listening to what I say. And it seems to me that the guidelines presented are about as good as we can expect without a change in the law. I hated the provisional guidelines released in September last year. They seemed to be about ticking boxes. They seemed to be about bureaucracy.
But the word compassion catches my eye. And as I read on, it seems to me that this streamlined policy is more about what goes through the hearts and minds of people than exactly which hoops to jump through. I might dare to believe that someone who, out of compassion and love, helps another human who is not physically able to do it themselves to leave behind an unbearable life, would have little to fear from the authorities.
Nevertheless, I believe that a tribunal, proposed by me and others, should definitely come into existence through a change in the law. It would establish the facts of a case well before the assisted death takes place. But it is also vitally important that the limited freedoms suggested by these guidelines are not used to mask abuse. I believe it is essential that, for the safety of all concerned, the proposed actions and the reasons behind them are discussed in the nonaggressive atmosphere of the tribunal, which may advise, warn, or, should it be suspicious, refuse.
The enlightened U.S. state of Oregon is one of three that at the moment allow assisted suicide. In Oregon, after consultation with two doctors, the terminally ill patient is given a prescription that will end their life.
But here is the interesting bit: 40 percent of those who have the prescription to hand die without using it. They’ve known that they can, and every day they have decided not to. They know that, if they choose, it is they who are in control, not the disease. That is power. That is triumph. That is how a human being should die.
ASSISTED DYING: IT’S TIME THE GOVERNMENT GAVE US THE RIGHT TO END OUR LIVES
New Humanist, July/August 2011
A short time ago I had to insist to a not very youthful journalist that during my early lifetime anyone who attempted to commit suicide and failed would face a criminal charge and be locked up, presumably to show them life was wonderful and thoroughly worth living.
It would be nice to think that in the not too distant future someone will be incredulous when told that a British citizen stricken with a debilitating and ultimately fatal disease, and yet nevertheless still quite compos mentis, would have to go all the way to another country to die. They would ask for an explanation, and I’d be damned if I could think of one. Three decent, sedate, and civilized European countries already allow physician-assisted suicide and yet, despite the fact that every indication is that British people understand and are in favour of assisted dying, if properly conducted, the government consistently turns its back on it. A year ago I was told by a cabinet minister that it would never happen in Britain and I suggested that this was a strange thing to say in a democracy and got a black look for my pains.
Initially, I thought the opposition was largely due to a certain amount of curdled Christianity; despite the fact that there is no scriptural objection, the prohibition came about in the fourteenth century when, because of religious wars and the Black Death, people were committing suicide on the basis that, well, since this world was now so dreadfully unpleasant then maybe it would be a good idea to make an attempt on heaven. Authority thought otherwise and objected. Who would milk the cows? Who would fight the wars? People couldn’t be allowed to slope off like that. They had to stay and face their just punishment for being born.
Even now I detect some echoes of that frame of mind: that affliction is somehow a penance for an unknown transgression. To hell with that! Every time the question of assisted dying is broached in this country there is a choreographed outcry, at suggested overtones of Nazism and, of course, the murder of grandmothers for their money. And the perpetrators get away with it because the British have a certain tradition of bullying from the top down. “The common people are stupid and we who know better must make the decisions for them.”
Well, the common people are not stupid. They might watch godawfully stupid reality TV and make a lot of noise in football grounds and they don’t understand, perhaps, the politics of Trident, but they are very clever about the politics of blood and bone and pain and suffering. They understand about compassion and, like my father, they are nothing if not practical about these things. He was incurably ill and saw no reason, given the absence of the hope of any cure, that he shouldn’t forgo any more suffering and head straight for the door.
And people also understand that, especially if you don’t have much money, long-term care in the U.K. can be somewhat problematical at best. And yet the government sits there like an ancient Pope, hoping that it will all go away.
DEATH KNOCKED AND WE LET HIM IN
Sunday Times, 12 June 2011
[The title Terry gave this piece was “Visiting Switzerland”]
Just before Christmas I saw a man die; Peter Smedley and his wife, Christine, had travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, because Peter felt that only there could he find what he wanted, which was a neat, tidy, and timely death. And I went with him to watch. The mind does indeed boggle. I once read that you should judge the length of the journey by the things you learn along the way. If that is true, then my road to Switzerland, and back home again, was a marathon.
Late last year the BBC, who had transmitted my Dimbleby Lecture on assisted dying much earlier in the year, asked me to learn something about assisted dying as practised elsewhere in Europe, and also to speak to Britons who had signed up with Dignitas, the Swiss organization which is your last resort if you live in Europe and your country does not allow you an assisted death. Of course, I said yes.
Three years ago I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I will not go into the reasons here why I may wish to be able to choose to end my life before the disease takes hold—I have spoken about and investigated dementia at length. As a writer I am blessed and cursed with an overactive imagination.