New round of celebrity-led cheer-leading for assisted suicide

This story is covered in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. 

Euthanasia season has arrived and the pro-death lobby, aided by their cheerleader and press office, the BBC, are now gearing up for a campaign aimed at forcing the legalisation of assisted suicide through British Parliaments both north and south of Hadrian’s Wall. 

Lord Falconer’s assisted suicide bill had its first reading in the House of Lords in May and Margo Macdonald’s Scottish bill is to be published next month.

Expect no let up for several months as story after supportive story mysteriously fills our television screens and airwaves.

In pushing their cause, this alliance of private campaigners and publicly-funded ‘news’ generators will face four major lines of opposition: parliamentarians, doctors, faith groups and disabled people.

Neutralising these opponents will be their major focus as they seek to build their case around emotive testimonies and celebrity endorsement (See here and listen here for why their ideas should actually be given short shrift).

Their aim will be to find ‘role models’ from each of these ‘problem groups’ willing to become a public voice for their campaign to help create the impression that their proposals of ‘assisted dying with safeguards’ have universal backing.

Dignity in Dying (DID), the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society, has already established a group of retired professors and past medical leaders - originally HPFCbut now rebranded HPAD(Health Professionals for Assisted Dying) - to counter the inconvenient fact that the BMA, all major medical colleges and two thirds of all doctors are opposed to any change in the law. They are now infiltrating the RCGPto try to push it neutral after failing to do the same with the BMA and have support from the editor of the BMJ. HPAD represents a massive 0.25% of doctors (Yes that's one quarter of one per cent).

Gathering a lobby of clerics has proved even more difficult but DID has managed to scrape together a flock of ‘faith leaders’ under the leadership of liberal rabbi Jonathan Romain.Interfaith Leaders for Dignity In Dying (or IFDiD) uses highly unorthodox interpretations of sacred texts to push the view that helping people to kill themselves is consistent with ‘loving one’s neighbour’.

In parliament there is the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Choice at the End of Life chaired by Heidi Alexander, Labour MP for Lewisham East. But their real champion is Lord Falconer, whose sham commission on ‘assisted dying’, stacked full of euthanasia sympathisers, recommended just over a year ago that the law should be changed to allow doctors to be licensed to dispense lethal drugs to mentally competent adults with less than six months to live. His bill currently before parliament seeks to make this a reality.

Disabled people have been much more difficult to pull into line, especially given that all the country’s major disability advocacy groups – SCOPE, Disability Rights UK, Not Dead Yet UK and UKDPC – remain opposed to any change in the law. They, more than anyone, know how easily vulnerable people can be pushed into ending their lives so as not to be a financial or emotional burden to others. 

So the pro-death lobby has been looking for a disabled people’s champion to become the new poster boy for the campaign. And this week they found him –in celebrity scientist Stephen Hawking.

The only missing ingredient was the means of getting international media coverage for Falconer and Hawking. Enter the BBC.

The publication of Hawking’s new book provided the hook for an invitation onto the BBC Breakfast national news programme last Tuesday where Hawking could be asked the question that would elicit the answer required to create the international news story:

‘I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives and those who help them should be free from prosecution. But there must be safeguards that the person concerned genuinely wants to end their life and they are not being pressurised into it or have it done without their knowledge or consent, as would have been the case with me.’

Now the stage was fully set for Falconer the next day, on the very same programme, to promote his bill as the solution. But in order for him to do this unimpeded the opportunity for any cross-examination to take place, or contrary position to be put, had to be nullified.

On Tuesday night I received a text from a BBC Breakfast producer asking me, as campaign director of the Care Not Killing Alliance, to contribute to the programme at 0820 the following day:

‘Hi Peter, James at BBC Breakfast here. We’d like you on the show tomorrow morning talking about Stephen Hawking. Are you available?’

I phoned back and accepted. ‘James’ lined me up to speak to camera at the Oxford Street Studios the following morning and said he would ring me back in five minutes to confirm travel arrangements.

Ten minutes later I was dumped by text:

‘Thanks for speaking to me just now. Afraid we’re not going to talk to you on the programme on this occasion. Sorry for the hassle. James, BBC Breakfast.’

I was naturally interested to see who they had in my place. But next morning, it was a one-to-one interview with Lord Falconer that was heavily billed throughout the programme.

So how did our national broadcaster provide ‘balanced coverage’ on this contentious issue?

Basically we had the extract from Hawking interview the previous day followed by the presenters, Bill Turnbull and Susannah Reid, offering Falconer an open goal to say what he wanted in order to promote his bill.

Falconer understandably grasped the opportunity with both hands and waxed lyrical about how wonderful things were in Oregon and will be here too once his bill was passed - far safer than at present when we all have to go off to Switzerland where there are no ‘safeguards’. There was no serious challenge and no opposing view put.

Why did they drop me? One can only speculate. I suspect that BBC cheer-leading played a part, but I suspect also that Falconer, possibly remembering our last debate on the Radio Four Today programme, might have said that he would prefer to speak unopposed and they deferred to his requests. 

I guess we will never know – unless someone truly in the know speaks out.

But this is just the latest in a long line of episodes of BBC cheerleading for various forms of euthanasia.

Yes, I’ve written to the Director General of the BBC about it and have encouraged others to complain. But I am not holding my breath.

In the meantime I have been privy to a conversation this week of angry disability rights leaders wondering what they have to do to get their voices heard in the media. My advice is not to try the BBC. 

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Guardian health editor jumps onto suicide promotion bandwagon

The Guardian this week has run the story of a man with motor neurone disease who wants to end his life.

Paul Chamberlain, 66, a former chartered accountant from Surrey, we are told, has obtained the drugs he needs ‘from overseas’.

Health editor Sarah Boseley (pictured) uses Chamberlain’s case to promote Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill, which has been drafted by Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society) and is due to have its second reading in the House of Lords this autumn.

A Samaritans contact phone number is given for those who might be ‘struggling to cope’ but this is a largely empty gesture aimed at giving respectability to a piece of journalistic propaganda which suggests that it can be both right and reasonable for sick people to kill themselves.

Boseley also breaks key media guidelines on suicide prevention. 

The WHO international guidelines on suicide portrayal refer to over 50 published studies, systematic reviews of which have consistently drawn the same conclusion, that media reporting of suicide can lead to imitative suicidal behaviours.

This phenomenon is variably termed suicide contagion, copycat suicide, suicide cluster or the Werther effect.

Its recommendations to media professionals include the following:

· Avoid language which sensationalises or normalises suicide, or presents it as a solution to problems
· Avoid prominent placement and undue repetition of stories about suicide
· Avoid explicit description of the method used in a completed or attempted suicide
· Avoid providing detailed information about the site of a completed or attempted suicide
· Take particular care in reporting celebrity suicides

By portraying this unfortunate man as a hero who is taking a brave and reasonable course of action, and by failing to do justice to the wider context of the debate, Boseley is steering vulnerable people toward suicide.

In so doing she has also bought into the myth that we should consider suicide in people who are sick or disabled as somehow different from suicide for those with mental health problems or who feel their lives are no longer worth living for other reasons.

But the idea that suicide should be promoted in the former group but prevented in the latter creates a false distinction and is actually profoundly discriminatory.

In reality most sick and disabled people do not want and to die and most people who do wish to die are neither sick nor disabled.  

Our response to all suicidal ideation should not be to hand over a poisoned chalice but to ask how we can manage the underlying problem better.

There are about 5,000 people in the UK with motor neurone disease (MND). About 1,000 die with the condition each year, three every day.

The vast majority do not want so-called ‘assisted dying’ (a euphemism for being poisoned with lethal drugs) but rather ‘assisted living’ until they die naturally.

But Boseley’s article gives no voice to this silent group. Nor are we told anything about the care available for people with MND.  No one representing the majority of those with the disease (like Alistair Banks) is given an opportunity to put a contrary view.

We also learn nothing about the rapid escalation of euthanasia and assisted suicide cases in the Netherlands, Oregon, Switzerland and Belgium which have legalised the practice but instead, without any evidence, are assured that such problems are imaginary.

Is it mere coincidence that this story follows hot on the heels of the visit of campaigner Philip Nitschke (aka Dr Death) who has just run a seminar in London advising attendees about how to obtain lethal drugs over the internet?

Thus far over 50 people in his native Australia have killed themselves with a drug which he promotes. One third of these were people in their 20s and 30s. Was it Nitschke, I wonder, who is also ‘helping’ Chamberlain?

Assisting suicide is illegal in Britain for good reasons.

First, any change in the law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

Second, persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our priority must rather be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.

Third, hard cases, like that of Paul Chamberlain, make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.

In accepting that suicide is sometimes right and that there is such a thing as a life not worth living Boseley crosses two critical and dangerous rubicons.

Her propaganda and Falconer’s bill should be given similar short shrift. 

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Leading parliamentary think tank says Lord Falconer’s ‘Assisted Dying’ Bill fails public safety test

Living and Dying Well (LDW) is a public policy research organisation established in 2010 to promote clear thinking on the end-of-life debate and to explore the complexities surrounding 'assisted dying' and other end-of-life issues.

It has just published a comprehensive report on Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill which was introduced into the House of Lords on 15 May.

Lord Falconer's Assisted Dying Bill [HL Bill 24] is the fourth of its kind to come before the House of Lords in the last ten years and seeks to authorise assisted suicide for mentally competent adults with less than six months to live.

None of its predecessors has made progress and the last one (Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill) was rejected in May 2006.

LDW’s report, jointly authored by eleven members of the House of Lords, concludes that Falconer’s bill ‘is little different from Lord Joffe's - it seeks to license doctors to supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients to enable them to end their lives’.

The authors include leading lawyers, doctors and disabled peoples’ advocates including Baroness Butler Sloss, Lord Carlile, Baroness Finlay and Baroness Campbell.

They recognise that ‘some people support legalisation of assisted suicide on grounds of autonomy and others oppose it as immoral’ but then seek to assess the bill on the ‘criterion of public safety’ - whether its enactment would ‘put seriously ill people at risk of harm’.

The bill, say the Peers, ‘contains no safeguards, beyond stating eligibility criteria, to govern the assessment of requests for assisted suicide’. Furthermore, it ‘relegates important questions such as how mental capacity and clear and settled intent are to be established to codes of practice to be drawn up after an assisted suicide law has been approved by Parliament’.

This is ‘wholly inadequate’ and on the issue of safeguards alone, they argue,  ‘the bill is not fit for purpose’.

It ‘places responsibility for assessing applicants for assisted suicide and supplying them with lethal drugs on the shoulders of the medical profession’ but at the same time ‘ignores expert medical evidence given to Parliament in recent years regarding the unreliability of prognoses of terminal illness at the range it envisages’.

‘Other considerations aside’, they assert, ‘the bill fails the public safety test by a considerable margin’.

The report concludes that the law that we have already ‘has the discretion to deal with exceptional cases in an exceptional way’ and that Lord Falconer's bill, by creating ‘a licensing system’ for assisted suicide crosses ‘an important Rubicon’.

To create exceptions to the blanket prohibition on assisted suicide which are ‘based on arbitrary criteria such as terminal illness or mental capacity, is to create lines in the sand, easily crossed and hard to defend. No convincing case has been advanced as to why these important considerations should be set aside.'

The tightly drafted reportruns to eleven pages and is well worthy of careful study. 

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Lord Falconer is seeking to overturn the Hippocratic Oath and change 2,400 years of history

'I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.'

So reads the Hippocratic Oath, which until recently used to be taken by all graduating doctors. 

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC) was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles (Classical Greece), and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine.

His oath at the time it was drafted was revolutionary.

Previously doctors had had the power to prescribe both remedies and poisons. But Hippocrates, recognising their great power and the potential for abuse, demanded that they should dedicate themselves solely to healing. 

Along with the Judeo-Christian ethic the Hippocratic Oath has formed the basis of every code of medical ethics since 400 BC; that is until now.

Lord Falconer, who has just introduced his ‘Assisted Dying Bill’ into parliament this week (see timetable here), is seeking to change 2,400 years of history.

His bill would make it legal for doctors to help mentally competent adults with less than six months to live to kill themselves. Two doctors would need to agree that a patient met the criteria and the option would not be open to minors, people without mental capacity or those who are not terminally ill.

The final step would involve a doctor (or nurse) hand-delivering lethal drugs to the patient at a time and place of their choosing and staying with them while they took the drugs and until they were dead.

Falconer has some supporters within the medical profession.

Twelve retired senior doctors have today send a letter to the Times (£) backing his bill. And in the last few years a new organisation, Health Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD), has set itself up under the auspices of the Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society).

But as an article in the Times (£) accompanying the above letter notes, the British Medical Association and almost all Royal Colleges are opposed to a change in the law. In fact about two thirds of doctors are opposed.

Interestingly, the Times newspaper, is in agreement with them.

In its editorial(£) today it says it would be ‘wrong to legislate’ and that ‘the law that Lord Falconer now wants is a step too far’.

The current blanket prohibition on assisted suicide keeps the numbers low, as evidenced by the very low numbers of people travelling to Dignitas facility in Switzerland to kill themselves.

Furthermore the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) already has discretion not to prosecute in hard cases and the authority to temper justice with mercy. But he is particularly tough on doctors, because of the power they have, as recognised by Hippocrates.

‘There is a danger’, argues the Times, ‘that a codified law that attempted to replace such difficult and nuanced judgments with statute would produce two problems.’

‘The first is a large increase in assisted suicides as it becomes more legally straightforward. This is the reason why many lobbyists for the disabled oppose the Bill, concerned that people will be put under pressure to end their lives.’

‘The second danger is, oddly, an increase in prosecutions for assisting suicide, as the discretion of the old system is replaced by a more formulaic approach. This may be the reason why doctors are, in general, against a new law. And why they are right to be.’

It is significant that the Times, which backed a change in the law at the time of Falconer’s last attempt to alter it in 2009 has now changed its position.

But it has done so on the basis of good evidence.

Jurisdictions which have legalised either assisted suicide or euthanasia, have seen a steady increase in case over subsequent years and the widening of criteria to include categories of people for whom it was never intended.

This pattern of incremental extension is seen in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Oregonand Belgiumand extension beyond mentally competent adults has been clearly seen in both the Netherlands and Belgium.

Our current UK law is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a powerful disincentive to exploitation and abuse, whilst giving both prosecutors and judges discretion to temper justice with mercy in had cases.

It may not be perfect, but we tamper with it at our peril.

And Hippocrates was right about doctors too. They are too powerful and too human to be given the power and authority to kill.

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Don’t be fooled by Lord Falconer’s ‘modest’ assisted suicide proposals

Lord Falconer has finally announced that his long awaited assisted suicide bill will be tabled in the House of Lords next week on Wednesday 15 May.

It is then that we will finally see the full text of the bill which will then proceed to second reading (debate stage) sometime in June, or possibly in the autumn.

According to the BBC and Telegraphthe bill will be based on the Oregon model – assisted suicide for mentally competent adults who have less than six months to live.

The timing has been carefully planned. On 13 and 14 May the Court of Appeal will be hearing the case of Paul Lamb, a 57 year old man with quadriplegia, who is seeking permission for a doctor to kill him by means of a lethal injection.

Off the back of media coverage of this case, Falconer, who is being backed by Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society), will argue that his proposal is modest in comparison.

Lamb is not terminally ill and wants a doctor to give him a lethal injection (euthanasia).  Falconer however is only asking for people who are terminally ill to have the right to receive help to kill themselves (assisted suicide).

This model, he will argue, will be safer for vulnerable people and will have ‘upfront safeguards’ to stop abuse.  

According to House of Lords calculations in 2005 a Dutch-type law (such as Lamb is seeking) would mean 13,000 euthanasia deaths a year in Britain, but an Oregon-type law (like Falconer’s) would mean only 650.

Falconer is thereby attempting to position himself as the reasonable middle ground between those who wish to keep euthanasia and assisted suicide illegal and those who want extensive decriminalisation.

We should not be fooled by this ploy and the situation in Oregon is already ringing loud alarm bells.

Members of the House of Lords should note that statistics released just earlier this year (full report here) show that the number of assisted suicide prescriptions and deaths in Oregon, once again, increased in 2012 and has now reached an all-time high. 

There were 59 assisted suicide deaths in Oregon in 2009, 65 in 2010, 71 in 2011 and 77 in 2012; a 30% increase overall in just four years. 

The number of prescriptions for assisted suicide was 95 in 2009, 97 in 2010, 114 in 2011 and 115 in 2012; 115 in 2012; a 21% increase since 2009.

Overall assisted suicides have gone from 16 in 1998 to 77 in 2012, an overall increase of 381% (see chart above).

This pattern of incremental extension is similar to that seen in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium, other countries that have changed the law.

A major factor fuelling this increase is suicide contagion - the so-called Werther effect. This is particularly dangerous when assisted suicides are backed by celebrities as they are here and given high media profile as they are frequently by the BBC. 

The Oregon numbers may not seem large but we need to remember that Oregon has a very small population relative to the UK and that they may well be an underestimate as they are based on physicians' self-reporting. 

But for argument's sake let's simply take them at face value. How would they then translate to Britain?

Back in 2006, and based on Oregon’s total of 38 assisted suicide deaths in 2005, the House of Lords calculated that with an Oregon-type law we would have about 650 cases of assisted suicide a year in Britain. 

But as the numbers in Oregon have since doubled to 77 the UK equivalent would now be 1,300.

We should learn from the Oregon experience and be resisting these moves. 

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide (a form of euthanasia) would inevitably place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives so as not to be a burden on others and these pressures would be particularly acutely felt at a time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet and health budgets are being slashed. Especially when fears about the NHS are actually fuelling support for assisted suicide. The so-called right to die can so easily become the duty to die.

And once legalised there will inevitably be incremental extension as we have seen in Oregon, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Legalisation leads to normalisation. New hard cases will brought to bring pressure to widen the existing criteria to allow extension to ‘Gillick competent’ minors, people without mental capacity who ‘would have wanted it’ and those who are ‘suffering unbearably’ but are not terminally ill.

I have previously blogged about the shroud of secrecy which surrounds assisted suicide practice in Oregon, the worrying trends in neighbouring Washington state, which enacted a similar law more recently and the way the Oregon law steers people toward suicide. 

Also deeply concerning are reports of depressed patients being killed without being treated, doctor shopping, deaths taking place without witnesses present (raising questions about elder abuse) and the fact that 44 of the 77 who died last year (57%) said that they were concerned about being a burden on family, friends and caregivers. 

The lessons are clear. Let’s not go there.

The best system is what we have already – a blanket ban on both assisted suicide and euthanasia which provides a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to both prosecutors and judges to temper justice with mercy in hard cases.

Under this the number of people going to the Dignitas facility in Switzerland to end their lives remains a trickle of about 15-20 per year.

So let’s keep that system in place and concentrate on providing the best possible care to people who are dying. Let’s major instead on killing pain without killing the patient.

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Lord Falconer announces yet another bill on assisted suicide

Lord Falconer (pictured) announced this week(£) that he would launch another bill to legalise assisted suicide this May in the House of Lords.

It is likely that Falconer has opted again for the Lords rather than the Commons, despite past heavy defeats there, because an opinion poll last September showed that more than seven out of ten MPs would not support a change in the law.

In line with the recommendations of his sham ‘Commission on Assisted Dying’ Falconer will push for doctors being given the power to help mentally competent adults with less than one year to live to kill themselves. As in the Abortion Act just two doctors' signatures will be required.

Given the vast range of different agendas that exist in the pro-euthanasia lobby, it is virtually certain that groups will push for incremental extension once the principle of assisted suicide is established.

A draft bill was published by Falconer last year and made the subject of a private consultation run by Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society). But many individuals and organisations chose to ignore the consultation due to its perceived bias and although it closed last autumn no ‘report’ has ever been published.

There has been surprisingly little media coverage about Falconer’s latest announcement, but I see that DID have launched a ‘campaign’ on their website to support it.

There have been three failed attempts to legalise assisted suicide in Britain in the last six years, in 2006, 2009 and 2010, all of which have failed due to concerns about public safety.

The so-called ‘safeguards’ which Falconer is now proposing are similar to those in the Joffe Bill which was rejected by 148 votes to 100 at second reading in 2006. Falconer had an amendment legalising assisted suicide defeated by 194-141 in 2009. Margo Macdonald's Scottish bill was defeated by an overwhelming majority of 85-16 in 2010.

Alarming reports of incremental extension in jurisdictions which have legalised assisted suicide or euthanasia, like Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US state of Oregon, along with worries about the effect the recession is having on vulnerable people and healthcare provision have intensified concerns that any change in the law would put added pressure on elderly, sick and disabled people to end their lives.

Official medical bodies and disability groups remain firmly opposed to a change in the law.

I expect the bill to get short shrift but peers will need to be reminded about the strong arguments against legalisation.

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BMA corrects Lord Falconer’ s misrepresentation of its position on ‘assisted dying’

Yesterday I drew attention to Lord Falconer’s false claim in the Times that the British Medical Association had adopted a neutral position on ‘assisted dying’ (a euphemism for assisted suicide and euthanasia).

In fact the BMA, like the RCGP, RCP and Association for Palliative Medicine, are all opposed to any change in the law.

The story of the former Lord Chancellor’s ‘fiction’ has since been picked up by George Pitcher on the Daily Mail blogs.

And now the BMA itself has written to the Times to correct the ‘error’.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, BMA Director of Professional Activities, writes in the Times today (£):

Sir, Your article (‘Allowing Tony to die would be euthanasia’ (£), July 4) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3465014.ece is incorrect when it says that the BMA has adopted a neutral position on assisted dying. A motion to change the BMA’s policy was debated last week at our annual conference but was overwhelmingly rejected. The BMA remains firmly opposed to assisted dying and we are not lobbying for any change in the law.

The letter is accompanied on the same page by a very interesting comment (£) from Terry Pratchett, Patron of Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society), who funded Falconer’s now defunct Commission on Assisted Dying.

He is arguing, unlike DID (which must cause some embarrassment), that euthanasia should be available to severely disabled people and not just ‘mentally competent, terminally ill adults’ (aka the DID mantra).

I have also written to the Times in response to Falconer’s false claims on behalf of Care Not Killing. The letter is on the Times website but I am not holding my breath about it making the paper edition.

I have pasted it below

My letter to the Times about Lord Falconer’s new bill

Former Lord Chancellor, Charles Falconer, in seeking to promote his new assisted suicide bill (The Times, 4 July), makes the false claim that ‘the position of the British Medical Association (is) now neutral rather than opposed’.

The BMA is in fact opposed to the legalisation of both euthanasia and assisted suicide and affirmed this position at their annual representative meeting on 27 June when they rejected by a large majority a motion to go neutral brought by doctors affiliated to Dignity in Dying, the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society. It is astounding that Falconer seems not to know this.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatric Society are also opposed as are around 65% of doctors generally and over 90% of palliative medicine specialists.

All major disability rights groups in Britain also oppose any change in the law believing it will lead to increased prejudice towards them and increased pressure on them to end their lives.

Furthermore the so-called ‘robust safeguards’ in Falconer’s new bill are essentially those that British Parliaments have rejected three times since 2006 out of concern for public safety in the House of Lords (2006 and 2009) and in Scotland (2010).

The present law with its blanket prohibition on both assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.

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Why legalising assisted suicide for anyone at all will inevitably lead to incremental extension

Pro-euthanasia activists always make a great play of how their proposals to help people kill themselves are extremely modest and are bound by ‘robust safeguards’.

Dignity in Dying, the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society, is a world leader in this art and their new draft bill, championed by Lord Falconer, is a classic example.

It’s only for the mentally competent, only for the terminally ill, only for adults they say.

There will be no killing of children, disabled people or demented people. It’s all going to be strictly controlled.

In fact it is only the beginning for two main reasons.

The first is that DID’s position is ultimately illogical. Their main arguments, autonomy (it’s my right) and compassion (I’m suffering unbearably), apply equally to some people who are not ‘mentally competent, terminally ill adults’. There are people who are not adults, not terminally ill or not mentally competent who claim they are suffering unbearably or who want to die.

Locked-in syndrome sufferer Tony Nicklinson is not terminally ill and celebrity novelist Terry Pratchett (pictured), who has Alzheimer’s, will soon not be mentally competent as a result of dementia. But they both want the ‘right to die’. On the other hand most terminally ill people do not want to die and are not suffering unbearably.

This means that if we legalise assisted suicide or euthanasia for those who are mentally competent terminally ill adults, the logic of the autonomy and compassion arguments will demand extension to other groups of people. Incremental extension is inevitable because the proposed legislation is actually discriminatory. It won’t survive five minutes in its current form without a human rights challenge on grounds of equality. Once you have a right for some, it will be argued, it must be there for all.

The second problem is that there are already many ever-so-slightly-more-radical groups which are already pushing for extension beyond mentally competent terminally ill adults. SOARS and FATE want it for elderly people, terminally ill or not, and EXIT International (Philip Nitschke’s outfit) says it should be available for the elderly bereaved and troubled teenagers.

In fact in the Times this week, celebrity novelist Terry Pratchett , a patron of Dignity in Dying who part-funded the defunct Falconer Commission, is saying that an exception should be made for Nicklinson who is not terminally ill and would require euthanasia and not assisted suicide (as he is not capable of killing himself even with assistance). So it seems that DID are unable to restrain the enthusiasm for extension of even their own patrons. I expect that Pratchett will also want an exception to be made for himself after he loses mental competence.

Pratchett argues as follows (£):

‘It appears that Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Tony Nicklinson are both stuck in the aspic of the law, which I quite understand. But surely, since Mr Nicklinson has a terrifying syndrome that none of us would ever wish to experience, one can’t help but wonder whether the law can take second place to compassion?’

I have already pointed out twenty disturbing facts about assisted suicide and euthanasia in Europe that Terry Pratchett does not tell us in the course of his relentless campaigning.

Don’t be fooled. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society may have changed its name but it has not changed its agenda. If they ever manage to get a bill passed by parliament which allows assisted suicide or euthanasia for anyone at all you can be sure that even before the ink is dry they will be clamouring for extension, and many will find the logic of the argument based on autonomy and compassion to be compelling.

It’s best not to go there at all.

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

Furthermore, persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our priority must be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.

The present law making assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.

Hard cases, like that of Tony Nicklinson, make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.

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