Lady Murasaki wrote:Vam wrote:
I'm sorry, but who do you mean by "they"?
Couldn't foolproof measures be taken to eliminate the grave concern you refer to? For example, let's hypothesise a case where the prognosis is incontrovertibly 'terminal' - that is, six months or less life expectancy - and the patient is deemed to be of sound mind. There should of course be mandatory consultation with 2 or more court-accredited doctors who are prepared to sign off on the prognosis, plus court-ordered, in-depth questioning of family, carers and anyone else involved, to ensure beyond doubt that the patient isn't under any pressure to prematurely end his/her life.
Surely all of that would be preferable to a law that removes a patient's reasonable request for a right to die painlessly, peacefully and with dignity.
Current legislation poses the risk of people just taking matters into their own hands, out of sheer desperation, which could very possibly result in botched suicide attempts.
They being the lawmakers.
There is no foolproof method that is good enough to legalise it, hence it was turned down again today.
Painless death? What makes you think that it's painless?
No, there's too much scope for people to take advantage if the law changed.
I respect your views on this, I really do.
But I still fully support a terminally-ill person's right to make an informed choice on how they should die, provided that all legal criteria is met, of course.
Morphine eases pain. Strictly-supervised, medically-administered morphine can make the pain go away for ever. I believe that would be a blessed release for Noel Conway and many like him.