[Aptorian]

http://news.bbc.co.u...ews/8490062.stm

Quote

Sir Terry Pratchett has said he's ready to be a test case for assisted suicide "tribunals" which could give people legal permission to end their lives.

The author, who has Alzheimer's, says he wants a tribunal set up to help those with incurable diseases end their lives with help from doctors.

A poll for BBC One's Panorama suggests most people support assisted suicide for someone who is terminally ill.

Sir Terry is due to set out his ideas in Monday's Richard Dimbleby lecture.

God's waiting room

In the keynote lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, the best-selling author will say that the "time is really coming" for assisted death to be legalised.

His comments follow the acquittal last week of Kay Gilderdale, of Stonegate, East Sussex, who was cleared of attempted murder after helping her daughter, Lynn, to commit suicide.

Ms Gilderdale admitted aiding and abetting her 31-year-old daughter, who had the chronic fatigue syndrome ME, to take her own life and was given a 12-month conditional discharge.

Lynn was found dead at their home on 4 December 2008.

Ms Gilderdale is to appear in Monday's BBC One Panorama programme.

A survey for the programme found 73% of those asked believed that friends or relatives should be able to assist in the suicide of a loved one who is terminally ill.

Sir Terry says he would like to see measures put in place to ensure that anyone seeking to commit suicide was of sound mind and not being influenced by others.

A legal expert in family affairs and a doctor familiar with long-term illness would also be part of his proposed tribunals.

"It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room," he will say.

More than 1,000 people were surveyed for the poll carried out for Panorama.

While there was clear support for assisted suicide for someone who is terminally ill, if - as in the case of Ms Gilderdale's daughter - the illness is not terminal, support for assisted suicide falls to 48%.

Responding to the Panorama poll, Director of Care Not Killing, Dr Peter Saunders, said: "To argue that if you are terminally ill you deserve less protection from the law than do the rest of us is highly discriminatory as well as dangerous.

"Many cases of abuse involving elderly, sick and disabled people occur in the context of so-called 'loving families' and the blanket prohibition of intentional killing or assisting suicide is there to ensure that vulnerable people are not put at risk."

'At peace'

Lynn was bedridden by the age of 15, and was admitted to hospital more than 50 times with a succession of serious illnesses over the next 16 years.

Ms Gilderdale told the programme: "I know I did the right thing for Lynn. She's free and at peace where she needed to be. Whatever the consequences, I would do it again."

The survey was carried out earlier this month and the figures are broadly in line with previous surveys.

Last year, the director of public prosecutions issued guidelines on when assisted suicide cases should be taken to court.

But campaigners have said there still needs to be more clarity in the law.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 01 February 2010 - 08:08 AM

[alt146]

It's a very tricky subject.

Personally if I found out I had some terminal disease I would like the option to put my affairs in order, say goodbye and do try cross off a couple of bucket-list type activities, then quickly and painlessly slip away, rather than wait for the inevitable as my body slowly fails. Several of my family members, as well as my girlfriends family members have recently passed away from cancer and it isnt pretty. Not something I want to go through, or put my loved ones through.

The problem is how do you decide exactly where to draw the line. Should someone who has a chronic but not terminal disease that greatly decreases their quality of living be allowed to commit suicide? Or someone who has HIV that hasn't developed into full-blown AIDS? What criteria whould be in place to determine if someone is ready and willing to die? There's a huge difference between assisting someone who doesnt want to suffer and the culling of burdonsome sick in intention, but a very small one in terms of the law that would be drafted.

So I'd be OK with it, but the laws that go into it would have to be very well thought out and regulated.

[Mezla PigDog]

Assisted suicide laws seem like a natural counter to the progression of medical science that can keep people alive with debilitating conditions. The associated loss of dignity and chronic pain aren't trumpeted so much as survival rates.

I don't understand how it will work, particularly in the case of dementia. The subject loses the ability to make the call and will even argue against what their fully cognitive self previously decided.

[caladanbrood]

I have to say, I'm in support of assisted suicide for people who want it. Whether due to mental or physical disability, or infact any other reason. We have too many people on the planet as it is, keeping people alive just for the sake of it at any cost is not a particularly logical idea...

[Cougar]

I think anyone should be allowed to kill themselves and that anyone who fears they may become incapable should be able to leave a living will to avoid problems of deciding whether they are of sound mind at the end. Basing it on the concepts of rationality is extremely difficult as it then falls upon someone to make a decision on when someone is capable of reason. Does depression rob you of reason, Alzheimers sufferers have good and bad days, do you privilege certain medical conditions above others? I think anyone, for any reason should be able to decide the manner of their own departure.

[Jusentantaka]

Assisted suicide all the way. People who really want to kill themselves are going to do it, whether they're splashing brain on the wall with a 45 or downing a bottle of vicodin with a bottle of cheap booze. An IV with 100cc (or less?) of morphine seems a lot more humane all around. Won't fuck it up and spend the next twenty years drooling and staring glass-eyed at a wall, no one is going to come into your place and see your pet chewing on you. I suppose that a decent psychologist should be all you need to decide though, or a will.

[Tapper]

<-- extremely glad I live in Holland, with euthanasia available.

[Obdigore]

I agree that if you make a living will while certified of sound mind, then you should be allowed to do this. Especially when diagnosed with a disease like MS or something. One that you could live with for years in pain and unable to do much of anything for yourself.

If you have dementia or alzheimers without a living will, then you are not of sound mind, and therefore cannot make this decision. Noone else should be able to make it for you either (unless you put in your living will that you want them to.).

Seems rather straight forward. The only problem is, who gets to decide if someone is of sound mind, as numerous psychiatrists will disagree on every single person.

[MTS]

Oh, I can see the scare tactics that will crop up.

'DEATH PANELS!!!11!!!1!'

[Jusentantaka]

Mappo, on 01 February 2010 - 05:40 PM, said:

Oh, I can see the scare tactics that will crop up.

'DEATH PANELS!!!11!!!1!'

Also a new avenue for gambling. Death pool anyone?

[Macros]

If I were left, by some accident or misfortune, in a vegetative state I would want the plug pulled asap.
I think, provided sound mind is in evidence, someones had enoguh with trying to live with a condition that is leaving them with little or no quality of live, then forcing them to continue living against their will is the crime

[Illuyankas]

Item one of my living will is going to be 'Burn my hard drives'.

[alt146]

heh, I'd have to put in my will which of my friends got my hardrives.

[Iconik]

I'm very surprised by the outcome of the vote. Pleased even. I don't think government should even enter the discussion. In the US and many, many other countries around the world government already has their hands too deep in our pockets. Pulling at the strings.

Kudos to the most in this thread. It pleases me.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

My only thought on the subject is that it would be fairly easy to get assisted suicide in as a defense in some murder cases, unless there was a good legal framework. I'd need to see the proposed law.

[Soulessdreamer]

Adjutant Stormy, on 02 February 2010 - 01:28 AM, said:

My only thought on the subject is that it would be fairly easy to get assisted suicide in as a defense in some murder cases, unless there was a good legal framework. I'd need to see the proposed law.

I f assisted suicide was legal, you would proberly have to annoucne your intentions and be screened before being authorised to do so or there would be an agency that did the assisting part with strict regulations. Doing it in secret would mean you have something to hide.

TTFN

[QuickTidal]

I think that anyone should be able to end their life at any time. If that is their decision then I am sure that most of the time they have thought it through and weighed their options.

In the specific case of Alzheimer's patients (something I have had far too many family members and friends succumb to) I absolutely believe in this right. Alzheimer's steals your life, your sanity, and your mind from you one agonizing day at a time. By the midway point of the disease you might be nasty and violent with those you love and not realize it, or they may even be unrecognizable to you. My great uncle would get violent when commercials came on the TV so we had to constantly run video tapes of cartoons for him, and even in the end that wasn't enough and he started injuring himself and those around him including his wife of 70 years. It is a horrific state of affairs, and something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. My girlfriend is an Occupational Therapist, and sees these cases day in day out and it's just appalling what it does to the brain.

I am sure that Mr. Pratchett sees that fact, and he doesn't want his loved ones to suffer through it with him and has decided he'd rather they, and the rest of the world, remember him as he was at his prime...

That is to say...Brilliantly, pants-wettingly funny, generous to his fans, and one hell of a goddamned writer who has consistently banged out at least two Discworld books for nearly 30 years now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 02 February 2010 - 01:56 AM

[Aptorian]

http://www.guardian....ssisted-suicide

Quote

A tribunal of mercy
As I face Alzheimer's, I want to die at a time of my choosing. We need a better way of assisting loved ones who wish the same

Richard Dimbleby lecturer and writer Terry Pratchett, celebrated for his Discworld series and, latterly, for his public disclosure of his Alzheimer's condition and his stance on assisted dying. Photograph: Murdo Macleod, 2009

As a pallid and nervous young journalist, I got to know about suicide. It was part of my regular tasks to sit in at the coroner's court, where I learned the manifold ways the disturbed human brain can devise to die. Coroners never used the word "insanity". They preferred the more compassionate verdict that the subject had "taken his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed". There was ambivalence to the phrase, a suggestion of the winds of fate and overwhelming circumstance. In fact, by now, I have reached the conclusion that a person may make a decision to die because the balance of their mind is level, realistic, pragmatic, stoic and sharp.

And that is why I dislike the term "assisted suicide" applied to the carefully thought-out and weighed-up process of having one's life ended by gentle medical means.

The people who thus far have made the harrowing trip to Dignitas in Switzerland to die seemed to me to be very firm and methodical of purpose, with a clear prima-face case for wanting their death to be on their own terms. In short, their mind may well be in better balance than the world around them.

I got involved in the debate surrounding "assisted death" by accident, after taking a long and informed look at my future as someone with Alzheimer's. As a result of my "coming out" about the disease, I now have contacts in medical research industries all over the world, and I have no reason to believe that a "cure" is imminent.

And so I have vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the Brompton Cocktail some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.

This seems to me quite a reasonable and sensible decision for someone with a serious, incurable and debilitating disease to elect for a medically assisted death by appointment.

The Care not Killing Alliance assures us that no one need consider a voluntary death of any sort since care is always available. This is questionable. Medicine is keeping more and more people alive, all requiring more and more care. Alzheimer's and other dementias place a huge care burden on the country. A burden that falls initially on the next of kin who may even be elderly and, indeed, be in need of some sort of care themselves.

A major objection frequently flourished by opponents of "assisted dying" is that elderly people might be illegally persuaded into "asking" for assisted death. Could be, but the Journal of Medical Ethics reported in 2007 that there was no evidence of the abuse of vulnerable patients in Oregon where assisted dying is currently legal. I don't see why things should be any different here.

Last year, the government finally published guidelines on dealing with assisted death. They did not appear to satisfy anybody. It seems that those wishing to assist a friend or relative to die would have to meet a large number of criteria in order to escape the chance of prosecution for murder. As laid out, the best anyone can do is keep within the rules and hope for the best.

That's why I and others have suggested some kind of strictly non-aggressive tribunal that would establish the facts of the case well before the assisted death takes place. The members of the tribunal would be acting for the good of society, as well as that of applicants, to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party. I would suggest there should be a lawyer, one with expertise in dynastic family affairs who has become good at recognising whether there is outside pressure. And a medical practitioner experienced in dealing with the complexities of serious long-term illnesses.

I would also suggest that all those on the tribunal are over 45, by which time they may have acquired the gift of wisdom, because wisdom and compassion should in this tribunal stand side-by-side with the law. The tribunal would also have to be a check on those seeking death for reasons that reasonable people may consider trivial or transient distress. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.

I would like to die peacefully before the disease takes me over. I hope that will not be for some time, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

• This is an edited excerpt from Terry Pratchett's Richard Dimbleby lecture for 2010, delivered on Monday 1 February 2010. Read an extended version of the lecture in G2

[Stradivarius]

i have nade it quite clear to my family that if anything majorly dehabilitating happens to me mentally or physically that they are to shoot me straight away!

weirdly enough my brother voleniered straight away!

[Use Of Weapons]

Stradivarius, on 02 February 2010 - 10:51 PM, said:

i have nade it quite clear to my family that if anything majorly dehabilitating happens to me mentally or physically that they are to shoot me straight away!

weirdly enough my brother voleniered straight away!

He clearly loves you greatly, much more than the others.