Euthanasia Bill will lead to hundreds of Scottish deaths per year

The End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill will lead to hundreds of Scottish deaths per year from assisted suicide and euthanasia if passed by MSPs, Care Not Killing (CNK) Scotland has warned.

The coalition group, brought together to promote palliative care as an alternative to any form of euthanasia being introduced in Scotland, says the scope of the bill is so wide and the safeguards so inadequate that it will lead, if passed, to people being killed without their consent as happens over 1,000 times per year currently in the Netherlands under a similar law.

Speaking on the content of the bill, launched earlier today by Independent Lothians MSP Margo Macdonald, CNK’s Policy Officer in Scotland, Dr Gordon Macdonald, said:

‘Margo Macdonald’s bill is hugely broad in scope, allowing not only assisted suicide but also voluntary euthanasia, not just for the terminally ill but for anyone who is ‘permanently physically incapacitated’, unable ‘to live independently’ and who ‘finds life intolerable’.

‘Ms MacDonald’s optimistic prediction of 50 Scottish euthanasia deaths per year is dangerously misleading. Her proposed bill is even more lax than the current law in the Netherlands where one in 38 deaths is from euthanasia – this would equate to almost 1,500 Scottish deaths per year. Her proposed safeguards are largely illusory because disabled and sick people will inevitably feel pressure to end their lives so as not to be a financial or emotional burden on others. Once euthanasia is sanctioned as a ’therapeutic option’ high profile hard cases will inevitably lead to further erosion of the public conscience and further relaxation of practice. This process of ‘incremental drift’ has been well documented in the Netherlands.’

“We are currently producing a detailed critique of the bill but it is already clear that Ms MacDonald’s proposals, if passed, will introduce a Dutch-type system. In the Netherlands currently up to 1,000 adult patients and dozens of disabled babies, under the Groningen protocol, are killed each year without their consent despite the fact that this is not specifically permitted by the legislation. Half of all Netherlands cases of euthanasia are not reported and increasingly so-called ‘terminal sedation’, giving large doses of sedatives whilst withdrawing food and fluids with the explicit intention of ending life, is now common practice accounting for 8% of all deaths.”