For or against?
I’ll declare an interest. Aged 28 I had cancer and spent time in wards and having chemo etc. I came out of that clear that I wanted my own choices not those of medics - I have a zest for life so I’d probably fight to live . But I want the choice.
15 Likes
For, with appropriate checks and balances, obvs.
3 Likes
For. I’ve seen too much suffering.
2 Likes
We are both for.
1 Like
I’m for it with the right checks in place.
We don’t let our pets suffer but our family members have to. Never made sense to me.
2 Likes
Having watched my granny, uncle and wife’s mum die slowly of cancer I am definitely for this.
2 Likes
Both of us are for.
2 Likes
Both for it here.
I even campaigned in favour of it in the 80s in Straya. They finally instigated it this year.
2 Likes
Yep, I watched my mum become a hollow husk of herself through Dementia and my first wife absolutely hate life as a Quadraplegic for a year before dying of Cancer.
Now, both Sarah and I have life threatening conditions and wouldn’t want that for each other / ourselves.
It’s plain barbaric.
5 Likes
Definitely for. As long as there are appropriate checks and balances in place I cant see how anyone would be against it. Watching someone intolerably suffering waiting and wanting to die when the means to end it is there but denied to them should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
4 Likes
Definitely for. Same reasons as above. And same checks and balances.
2 Likes
Both of us are for, again with the appropriate checks etc.
1 Like
The only check needed, is the person choosing to die, is of sound mind.
Watch the film, " Who’s life is it, anyway."
Richard Dreyfuss
1 Like
I am for assisted dying in principle but I don’t think it is as simple as that.
The vote tomorrow is not for a principle it is for a practical process and I don’t think it is there the way the bill is written and don’t trust the way it would be applied.
I am also outraged at the way palliative care has been underfunded and largely ignored in the NHS. The NHS really isn’t cradle to grave care.
Having worked in the hospice world I am appalled that so many decisions they make are based on funding, and in most hospices that means 70% to 80% through their own fundraising.
I don’t think you can have a discussion about assisted dying without having a proper discussion about palliative care. I hope the vote is no tomorrow, I think the bill is very poor.
It is too easy to pass bad law. Being in favour in principle doesn’t mean this bill should pass.
2 Likes
Heard a couple of hours ago my mate Russ - one of the lokel yokels - has finally been told his cancer is beyond treatment and that he has weeks at best; he may not see christmas. He’s only a couple of years older than me, and until this hit a few months ago was in all other ways fitter and livelier than me. His condition means that he cannot digest food - so he is likely to effectively slowly starve to death before the cancer kills him more directly. He already looks like a concentration camp inmate.
Only a barbaric nation wracked with superstition and ignorance can possibly think this is an acceptable death and be prepared to use the full force of the law to prevent people like him from seeking release from their torture and misery.
If he asks me - which he may - I will help him (for example) get to Switzerland, and were our positions reversed, I know he wouldn’t bat an eyelid doing the same for me - as I would want.
It shows how fucking backward and infantile humanity is that we even need to debate this.
13 Likes
But do you support assisted dying in principle?
You have experience Kev. What changes would you propose ?
It doesn’t go far enough, but it is a start. I am nervous about poorly written law, passed with minimal debate on a Friday motion, running the risk of a Judge led expansion. Having said that, no government had wanted to touch this with a barge pole.
Assisted living needs proper funding, as Kevin has mentioned, such that a choice is one that can actually be made by all.
I would like to see an extension to cover non terminal illness, something that is not even being debated tomorrow. Missed opportunity for a generation.
3 Likes
For.
My mum was so brave to make her own decision after years of suffering and pain.
That was in 1999, she turned 61.
4 Likes
My experience is of my wife starving to death in front of my eyes because gastroenterology refused to help her with her swallowing problem. She was going to die anyway, but perhaps she wouldn’t have died as quickly had they helped her. Before the cancer evolved its way round the therapy she was already suffering real distress with the swallowing when her only chance of staying alive literally depended on her swallowing 16 tablets a day. Watching the person you love above all others struggle time after time after time to get just one tablet down is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. Still gastroenterology refused to help.
I suspect that was because they didn’t have enough resource to treat both the people who would die and also those they might just save. So they threw the no-hopers overboard. The solution is not to give palliative care a bigger slice of the pie, because that would mean that upstream potentially life-saving care would get a smaller slice. The solution is to make the pie bigger.
Until that happens we have to make the best we can of a bad job, and enabling assisted dying is better than absolutely forbidding it. So I am for.
When Claire was first diagnosed I told her that if things ever got too much for her then she should ask me and I would end her life. I would take the consequences. The more warning she could give me, the gentler I’d be able to make it. If she left it until she was finally in a hospital/hospice bed then it might be too difficult for me. As it was she suffered little physical pain although the terrible struggle of fighting the disease and all the treatment complications was utterly exhausting. In the end she looked me in the eyes and said “Please make it stop”. The hospice team had already told us that she had less than 24 hours and had started the syringe driver with the midazolam, haloperidol and hyoscine in. I had to make a call and I judged that she was close enough to the end that the few remaining hours I might save her weren’t worth the minute or two of distress and pain I’d inevitably have to cause. I let nature and the drugs take their course.
If she’d asked a fortnight earlier though, and convinced me that she meant it, then I’d have done it. “To love and to cherish” was the promise I’d made. Ending unbearable suffering would have been cherishing.
41 Likes