LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – A story caught my eye earlier in the summer the tragic case of two non-terminally ill sisters from the US, who ended their lives as one of Switzerland’s death clinics.
Sisters Lila Ammouri (54) and Susan Frazier (49) decided to end their lives at a Swiss assisted suicide clinic after becoming “tired of life” and worried about medical “frustrations”. According to one assisted suicide advocate the sisters were suffering from insomnia, vertigo and back pain. Yet these treatable conditions were enough to allow them to access the cocktail of drugs to kill themselves.
Troublingly this story is not alone. Just look at the US state of Oregon, often held up as a shining example of a so-called safe system, but you don’t have to scratch very hard to reveal a system that has denied cancer patients lifesaving and life extending drugs, failed to protect vulnerable people and which uses death row drugs that see people literally drown in their own secretions.
In one infamous example Barbara Wagner, a 64-year-old grandmother who was diagnosed with lung cancer was refused the drugs she needed to save her life because they were expensive, while at the same time being offered a medically assisted death.
There are other problems too. According to official statistics a clear majority of those who opt to end their lives cite the fear of being a burden on their families as a reason for doing so. In 2019, nearly six in 10 (59 percent) killed this way gave “burden” as a reason and a further 7.4 percent cited financial reasons.
Then there is the terribly low number of people dying by assisted suicide who are referred for psychiatric assessment. In 2020, Last year, just two of the 238 people, or 0.8 percent, who died by assisted suicide in Oregon were referred for psychiatric assessment even though the American Psychiatristic Association has published guidance on this issue, identifying a very high prevalence of treatable depression in people diagnosed with a terminal disease.
Then there has been the reinterpretation of what constitutes a terminal disease – no longer does the prognosis take into account lifesaving and life extending treatments meaning an insulin dependent diabetic, qualified to have their life ended.
And in a recent development Oregon lawmakers have announced that they are dropping the residency requirement, opening up assisted suicide to millions of Americans.
All this has happened within a system that assisted suicide advocates claim is full of safeguards, highly regulated and a model for the UK to follow.
Closer to home, we see how laws introduced in the Netherlands and Belgium, which were supposed to be limited to mentally competent terminally ill adults, have been expanded to include non-mentally competent adults and children, disabled people and even those with treatable psychiatric conditions such as depression and anorexia. Worryingly many of these changes were made prior to any legislative reform, or parliamentary scrutiny as euthanasia advocates continue to push for death on demand including for those who are just ‘tired of life’.
One chilling example of this relates to the extension of euthanasia to children in the Netherlands. Although the Dutch Health Minister, only recently called for a change in the law (2020), euthanising children has been going on since the 1990s. Indeed, a nationwide survey from 1995 showed that of 1,041 deaths of children within the first year after birth, nearly one in four (23 percent) involved administering potentially life-shortening drugs to treat pain and one in 12 cases (eight percent) involved the deliberate giving of a drug to hasten death. So endemic had the practice got that medics even produced their own guidelines, the Groningen Protocol, in 2002 to regularise it.
Equally disturbing has been the lightening pace of changes in Canada which introduced euthanasia in 2016. In just six years, we have seen the requirement for people to be terminally ill ditched with disabled people and those with non-terminal illnesses now also having their lives intentionally ended by doctors. From next year, those with mental health problems will also qualify for death by euthanasia, even if they are suffering from treatable depression, PTSD or anxiety. Perhaps this explains why in 2021, over 1700 Canadians who were euthanised cited loneliness or social isolation as a reason for their desire to end their lives and now we are seeing the first request for euthanasia due to the impact of ‘long-COVID’.
The truth is there is no safe system of assisted suicide or euthanasia anywhere in the world. So-called safeguards, introduced by well-meaning but naive politicians, over time are amended, dropped completely, or simply ignored. This is why the safest system is the one we have – a prohibition on assisted suicide and euthanasia.