I actually thought that the coverage of the Purdy judgement in this issue of the Tablet was rather sensible and informative, and quite a useful read. The centre piece of this coverage is an article by Professor Jones, director of the Centre for Bioethics and Emerging Technologies at St Mary's University College, Twickenham.
The last sentence of the following extract seems especially telling:
.. in official surveys Dutch doctors admitted ending the lives of 1 000 people a year who had never explicitly asked for euthanasia, and in 2005, in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine, a report claimed that euthanasia had been used illegally on 22 infants with spina bifida. As a result euthanasia advocates rarely mention Holland these days..
And the following is interesting in the light of John Smeaton's post (and the subsequent defence of it), which do, I assume, reflect the stance taken by SPUC on the judgement (their news release is here):
It is not inevitable that the Purdy case will lead to legalised assisted suicide. It is possible for the DPP to put forward conservative and flexible guidelines that do not involve any reference to disability and that do not bring euthanasia closer. The greatest danger at the moment is that this technical ruling gives momentum to the euthanasia movement and makes legalisation seem inevitable. If this is accepted without challenge, then the United Kingdom could sleepwalk in a change in the law.
As matter of media engagement, the less cautious response of SPUC seems to give "momentum to the euthanasia movement and makes legalistation seem inevitable", adding to the presumptive celebrations of Debbie Purdy and her friends on College Green, that had the utterly contradictory (and presumptive) strap line: "It gives me my life back".
1 comment:
Just came across this extract from Lady Chapman's obituary
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/08/lady-chapman-obituary)
The right-to-die legislation troubled her, for example, and she warned in 2007 that "assessment of 'best interest' and 'burdensome' should not be medical-model based, and should not focus only on the negative aspects of a person's condition". She went on to argue: "A situation that appears intolerable to people who are fit and well may be more than outweighed by the positive experiences of the patient."
She also used the example of her mother, who died of cancer aged 53, but gained an "extra month" from hospice care that Chapman described as "the best, as well as the worst, month in our family's life". She is survived by her father and brothers.
• Nicola Jane Chapman, Baroness Chapman, disability campaigner, born 3 August 1961; died 3 September 2009
Post a Comment