Health secretary Wes Streeting will vote against the assisted dying Bill, raising concerns that palliative care is not good enough for patients to make an informed choice on ending their life.
I suppose he’s right - if palliative care isn’t good enough it may force people to end their lives early. Sort that out and come back to this. I’m generally in favour of assisted dying but with the right safeguards and support, but the latter isn’t there right now.
I understand an appreciate this point of view to an extent, it opens a door to medical practitioners offering this to patients as an easy option when they may recover, or to poor people who can’t afford treatments in private care, knowing that NHS waiting lists mean they may never get free treatment before it is too late. Safeguards would be an absolute must, and would inevitably be abused without them.
However, whether it is legal or not to have a patient willingly end their life, it is an admittance that the person will have worse than acceptable end-of-life care if they die naturally under the current system. In Wes’ opinion, people with a terminal or life-limiting condition should have limited or even no say in how they spend their remaining hours, days, weeks, months of life.
To take one of the more gruesome examples, people with bone cancer in their skull have to face months of medieval-grade torture, agonising spikes burrowing into their eyes and brain, lose their eyesight, and left to waste away in abject agony. A bone cancer victim’s skull looks like this.
I don’t think it is acceptable to say, “Sorry, the NHS wasn’t able to detect it while it was treatable, but we won’t let you end your suffering in a controlled, safe, and painless way. It would be inhumane to kill you.”
Some people would rather take matters into their own hands, and this just results in suicides, in manners that are more painful to themselves and their friends and family who they will be afraid to tell, in case they try to stop them. Depending on the manner they choose, they may also inadvertently hurt others.
Bodily autonomy is a hot topic at the moment, and seeing as we have all been forced to endure life on this planet (for better or for worse), I think it’s only fair to have some say in how we end our life.
I suppose he’s right - if palliative care isn’t good enough it may force people to end their lives early. Sort that out and come back to this. I’m generally in favour of assisted dying but with the right safeguards and support, but the latter isn’t there right now.
I understand an appreciate this point of view to an extent, it opens a door to medical practitioners offering this to patients as an easy option when they may recover, or to poor people who can’t afford treatments in private care, knowing that NHS waiting lists mean they may never get free treatment before it is too late. Safeguards would be an absolute must, and would inevitably be abused without them.
However, whether it is legal or not to have a patient willingly end their life, it is an admittance that the person will have worse than acceptable end-of-life care if they die naturally under the current system. In Wes’ opinion, people with a terminal or life-limiting condition should have limited or even no say in how they spend their remaining hours, days, weeks, months of life.
To take one of the more gruesome examples, people with bone cancer in their skull have to face months of medieval-grade torture, agonising spikes burrowing into their eyes and brain, lose their eyesight, and left to waste away in abject agony. A bone cancer victim’s skull looks like this.
I don’t think it is acceptable to say, “Sorry, the NHS wasn’t able to detect it while it was treatable, but we won’t let you end your suffering in a controlled, safe, and painless way. It would be inhumane to kill you.”
Some people would rather take matters into their own hands, and this just results in suicides, in manners that are more painful to themselves and their friends and family who they will be afraid to tell, in case they try to stop them. Depending on the manner they choose, they may also inadvertently hurt others.
Bodily autonomy is a hot topic at the moment, and seeing as we have all been forced to endure life on this planet (for better or for worse), I think it’s only fair to have some say in how we end our life.