Adapted from VES UKAdapted from the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (England & Wales)
The Case for Voluntary Euthanasia
Contents:
The right to decide
Passive euthanasia versus active euthanasia
Quality of life – pain is not the only issue
Euthanasia goes on already
Just one possible option at the end of life
The Voluntary Euthanasia Society (UK) was estabished in 1935 by a group of doctors, lawyers and churchmen. VES’s aim is to make it legal for a competent adult, who is suffering unbearably from an incurable illness, to receive medical help to die at their own considered and persistent request. Our case for legalising assisted dying is set out below (go to the definitions section for an explanation of terms).
The right to decide
We believe that everyone has the right to choose how they live and die. Each person has value and is worthy of respect, has basic rights and freedoms and the power to control his or her destiny. Our campaign to legalise assisted dying within certain strictly defined circumstances is fundamentally about choice.
Passive euthanasia versus active euthanasia
At the moment, doctors can legally practice ‘passive’ euthanasia – that is, taking away or withholding treatment even if the person will die. However, doctors cannot directly help the person to die, for example, by giving a lethal injection. We argue that, in situations where a competent, terminally ill patient is asking for help to die, passive euthanasia has exactly the same moral and practical result as giving a lethal injection at the patient’s request.
Quality of life – pain is not the only issue
Not everyone dies well. At least 5% of terminal pain cannot be fully controlled, even with the best care. Other distressing symptoms such as sickness, incontinence or breathlessness cannot always be relieved.
But pain is certainly not the only issue in decisions about the end of life. What a patient thinks about their quality of life is often far more important. Many people do not want to spend the last days or weeks of their life in a way which, to them, is undignified.
Annie Lindsell, a campaigner for legalising assisted dying, said before she died of Motor Neurone Disease in 1997,
“The hospice movement consistently maintains that in most cases it manages the pain of terminally ill patients. What they cannot control, however, is the loss of personal dignity and that is a very individual criterion that no one but the patient can comment on.”
Having the power to take control over their life and death can help people to keep a measure of human dignity in the face of their suffering. In 1995, sociologists Julia Addington-Hall and Clive Seale carried out an academic study into what patients with terminal cancer thought about dying. They said:
“Requests for euthanasia may indicate not that patients are giving up in the face of suffering, but that they are positively asserting their desire to control events.”
Euthanasia goes on already
At the moment, the law and current medical practice do not match up. In 1994 a survey published in the British Medical Journal showed that some doctors already help patients to die. Few doctors have been prosecuted and, like Dr Cox, who was convicted of attempted murder in 1992, they have always been treated with great sympathy. Doctors are also legally able to give pain-relieving treatment in such high doses that people may die more quickly. This is known as the ‘double effect’ – relieving the patient’s suffering is the accepted consequence of such treatment, with death as an unintended outcome.
We argue that doctors should not be helping patients to die behind closed doors. Assisted dying should be openly discussed and regulated, to make sure that both patients and doctors are protected.
Just one possible option at the end of life
Making it legal to help a person to die does not threaten the hospice movement. Assisted dying should be just one of the options at the end of life. As Dr Pieter Admiraal, a well known Dutch supporter of voluntary euthanasia, has repeatedly stressed, there should be:
“No euthanasia without palliative care.”