Kay Gilderdale should have been investigated

Phil Friend, Chairman of Radar the Disability Rights Organisation, has today posted a fascinating article in the Guardian titled ‘Kay Gilderdale should have been investigated’. In it he argues that in cases of assisted dying, anyone involved should have to account for their actions.

In response, Emily Halsall, speaking for Dignity in Dying, says that the number of people killing themselves in Oregon with legally supplied drugs from their doctors is ‘small and steady’. But, if you look at the official figures, it isn’t! The numbers have risen fourfold in the 13 years of the law’s existence and they are on a rising trend. If the trend were to be seen in Britain, we would see nearly 1,000 physician assisted suicides a year here. Moreover, independent evidence is emerging that one in six of those who are killing themselves in this way were suffering from untreated depression that was not detected by the doctors who assessed them.

Ms Halsall says that Dignity in Dying wants to protect people from abuse but does not think that the current law provides that protection. So how would that protection be increased, one might ask, by relaxing the law? The standard answer to this, of course, from the pro-euthanasia lobby is that we needn’t worry as there would be ‘safeguards’. Five years ago a parliamentary select committee examined so-called safeguards in Lord Joffe’s ‘assisted dying’ bill and drew attention to a range of weaknesses in them. Yet, though the committee made suggestions for tightening them up, the same old ‘safeguards’ are trotted out every time this issue is discussed.

It's easy to talk in broad brush terms about changing the law for ‘terminally ill, mentally competent adults nearing the end of their lives’. But experience has shown that, when you get down to actually defining these terms with sufficient care to protect the vulnerable, the matter isn’t so easy as it sounds. The safeguards we have seen to date are illusory.

This is a highly complex issue where the stakes are literally those of life or death. We should not forget that public safety is the first responsibility of all law making.