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Posted: 16-06-2012 23:38 Post subject:

Just something I came across from an 2005 journal article

Posted: 20-06-2012 07:42 Post subject:

Posted: 17-08-2012 07:56 Post subject:

Tony Nicklinson loses High Court right-to-die case
By James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, BBC News

A man paralysed from the neck down has lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life without fear of prosecution.
Tony Nicklinson, 58, from Melksham, Wiltshire, communicates by blinking and has described his life as a "living nightmare" since a stroke in 2005.
Mr Nicklinson said he would appeal against the decision.

The case went further than previous challenges to the law in England and Wales on assisted suicide and murder.
Another man, known only as Martin, who is 47, also lost his case to end his life with medical help.

Father-of-two Mr Nicklinson was left paralysed with locked-in syndrome after a catastrophic stroke while on a business trip to Athens.
He said he was "devastated" by the court's decision.

"Although I didn't want to raise my hopes, it happened anyway because a fantastic amount of work went into my case and I thought that if the court saw me as I am, utterly miserable with my life, powerless to do anything about it because of my disability then the judges would accept my reasoning that I do not want to carry on and should be able to have a dignified death.
"I am saddened that the law wants to condemn me to a life of increasing indignity and misery."

Explaining the decision, Lord Justice Toulson, said both cases were "deeply moving".
However he added: "A decision to allow their claims would have consequences far beyond the present cases. To do as Tony wants, the court would be making a major change in the law.
"It is not for the court to decide whether the law about assisted dying should be changed and, if so, what safeguards should be put in place.
"Under our system of government these are matters for Parliament to decide."

The case differed from other "right-to-die" cases which have focused on assisted suicide. Mr Nicklinson would be unable to take lethal drugs, even if they were prepared by someone else.
For someone else to kill him would amount to murder.

The rulings were welcomed by the group SPUC Pro-Life. Paul Tully from the organisation said: "Compassion and solidarity are the humane and caring responses to locked-in syndrome. To legalise killing of those who are suffering would adversely affect many, many people.
"We trust that today's judgment will help end the insidious campaign in the British courts to change the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia."

The British Medical Association said the court had made "the right decision".
Dr Tony Calland, from the BMA's medical ethics committee, said "The BMA does not believe that it would be in society's best interests for doctors to be able to legally end a patient's life.
"The BMA is opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying and we are not lobbying for any change in the law in the UK".

During the hearing in June David Perry QC, who is representing the Ministry of Justice, said Mr Nicklinson's "tragic and very distressing circumstances evoke the deepest sympathy".
"Notwithstanding the distressing facts of his situation, the defendant submits that the claim for declarations is untenable. The law is well established," he added.

Prof John Saunders, Royal College of Physicians: ''This is not about the right-to-die, this is about a right to enable a third party to actively terminate his life for him''
The case was contested on the issue of "necessity" arguing that the only way to end Mr Nicklinson's suffering is to allow him to die.
This was used in 2000 when conjoined twins were separated, saving one even though doctors knew the other would die.

Mr Nicklinson's team also argued that his case is covered by Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights which deals with the right to respect for private and family life.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19249680

A very sad case. Sad

I feel that just knowing that he could end it all one day, might actually help him cope with his distressing condition for a while longer.

Posted: 22-08-2012 16:50 Post subject:

It seems that somehow he did take matters into his own hands (so to speak):

Right-to-die man Tony Nicklinson dead after refusing food

Tony Nicklinson, a man with locked-in syndrome who fought for the right for doctors to legally end his life, has died.
The 58-year-old was paralysed from the neck down after suffering a stroke in 2005 and described his life as a "living nightmare".
Last week Mr Nicklinson, from Melksham, Wiltshire, lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life.

His family solicitor said that he had refused food from last week.
Saimo Chahal said Mr Nicklinson died at home at about 10:00 BST accompanied by his wife, Jane, and two daughters, Lauren and Beth.
She said: "Jane told me that Tony went rapidly downhill over last weekend, having contracted pneumonia."

She added: "Jane said that, after Tony received the draft judgment on 12 August refusing his claim, the fight seemed to go out of him.
"He said that he was heartbroken by the High Court decision that he could not end his life at a time of his choosing with the help of a new doctor.
"He could not understand how the legal argument on his behalf could not succeed."

She said Mr Nicklinson had told her two days after the ruling he was "crestfallen, totally devastated and very frightened".
He had added: "I fear for the future and the misery it is bound to bring.
"I suppose it was wrong of me to invest so much hope and expectation into the judgment but I really believed in the veracity of the argument and quite simply could not understand how anybody could disagree with the logic.
"I guess I forgot the emotional component."

Ms Chahal said Mr Nicklinson had made an advanced directive in 2004 refusing any life-sustaining treatment.

His family had earlier updated his personal Twitter account.
The messages said: "You may already know, my Dad died peacefully this morning of natural causes. he was 58.
"Before he died, he asked us to tweet: 'Goodbye world the time has come, I had some fun'."

Wiltshire Police said the force was not investigating Mr Nicklinson's death.

Mr Nicklinson had been paralysed since suffering a stroke while on a business trip to Athens.
He had campaigned for the law to be changed to allow doctors to assist his suicide without fear of prosecution.

Prior to last week's case, in an article he wrote for the BBC, he had described his life as "a living nightmare".
He said: "What I find impossible to live with is the knowledge that... I have no way out - suicide - when this life gets too much to bear."
He added: "It cannot be acceptable in 21st Century Britain that I am denied the right to take my own life just because I am physically handicapped."

However, three High Court judges rejected his plea for the law to be changed, saying the issue should be left to Parliament.
Another man, known only as Martin, who is 47, also lost his case to end his life with medical help.

Mr Nicklinson said he would appeal against the decision but his lawyer said this would now end unless "someone steps forward in similar circumstances to pursue the action".

Professor Penney Lewis, professor of law at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King's College London, said that Mr Nicklinson's plight would continue to raise questions about a change in the law.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19341722

Posted: 22-08-2012 16:53 Post subject:

Very sad, poor guy. No sense blaming the courts, the law needs to change.

Posted: 22-09-2012 08:00 Post subject:

Wife of Falmouth man who took his own life calls for change in suicide law
12:07pm Thursday 20th September 2012 in News

THE DEVASTATED wife of a terminally ill man who chose to take his own life alone rather than let her face prosecution has called for a change in the law.

Anne Hobkinson told the Packet he experiences had left her believing the law should change to allow terminally ill people the right to die following the death of her husband of 40 years, Tom. She said: “At one time 40 or 50 years ago abortion was considered something beyond the pale, and you could only have one if two doctors signed a statement saying the pregnancy would be harmful either physically or mentally.
“I honestly feel euthanasia should be treated the same way now.

“If two doctors agree that there is no hope of a cure and that your condition is terminal you should have the choice of taking something that will send you to sleep and let you die peacefully.
“It is everybody’s right to have that opportunity.
“If anybody was forced to witness anybody suffering in the way that Tom did, they would agree it is an offence to their human rights not to have the chance to end it.”

An inquest in Truro last week heard that Tom, 71, who was suffering from motor-neurone disease, had told family, friends, doctors and carers of his intentions in the months leading up to his death on September 29 last year.

The couple were at their Falmouth flat when he told Anne he was ready to die, before telling her to go to bed and to take a sleeping tablet at 10.45pm.
He then wrote a suicide note and took drugs he had purchased online from Mexico. He was found dead by Anne when she woke at 3am.

The hearing was told that Tom’s disease had progressed to a stage where he was having trouble swallowing and breathing, and his condition would only worsen in the weeks and months to come.
The coroner, Dr Emma Carlyon, recorded a verdict of suicide, accepting that Tom had intended to take his own life, and had acted alone.

Anne said she had been relieved by the coroner’s attitude at the hearing. She said: “I was in a state of trepidation before the inquest, thinking people would not understand, but the coroner and everyone were so sympathetic.
“I always felt so strongly that it was Tom’s right to do what he did, but I know there is a huge amount of people in England who do not believe it is.

“I was just so glad that he found the right drugs to do it properly, we were both terrified it would not kill him, but would make him worse instead.
“However, he had planned everything in such detail to make sure it worked and that I was not involved, to an extent that I had not realised before the inquest.

“There were questions over had he written his own note, could he have opened the bottles himself.
“If he had left it for another month I would have had to have been involved, and it could all have been very different.”

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/9940122.Wife_of_Falmouth_man_who_took_his_own_life_calls_for_change_in_suicide_law/?ref=mr

Posted: 26-10-2012 09:14 Post subject:

Prue Leith asks: Why did my brother die in agony?
Terminally ill patients are suffering slow and painful deaths because doctors dare not fall foul of the law against assisted suicide
By Prue Leith
6:40AM BST 26 Oct 2012

My brother David died recently in the care of the NHS. His death was not their fault: no one can do anything about bone cancer except alleviate the pain. Which is what they spectacularly failed to do.

Bone cancer does not kill you. It just hurts like hell and your bones become so fragile that coughing breaks ribs. You have to wait for the disease to spread to an organ, the failing of which will kill you. Or you can hope for pneumonia, “the old man’s friend”, to finish you off.

Either way, you should not have to endure months of pain and die in agony. Pain relief is possible, and many hospices and a few hospitals (notably the Royal Marsden) manage a patient’s dying days with compassion and palliative drugs (notably morphine) tailored to the patient’s pain. But most do not.

Hospices have a better reputation. Their aim is to aid a peaceful death. Hospitals, on the other hand, are tasked with keeping the patient alive, however much he or she suffers.

David was eventually given morphine. The blessed relief would last three hours, but the nurses would be unable to give him his next dose for another hour. So out of every four hours, one would be spent in groaning, crying, sometimes begging, agony.

Consultants see their patients rarely and briefly. If they see them in extremis, pity might move them to increase the dose – something the ward staff, who must deal with the pleading and crying, cannot do. It must be hell for the nurses; hell also for the other patients in the ward; distressing beyond measure for the family. And torture for the patient.
You would not treat a dog like that. And if you did, the RSPCA would rightly prosecute you for wilful cruelty and neglect.

The truth is, I suspect, that doctors fear being accused of murder, or at least mercy killing. They dare not prescribe enough morphine to make the patient comfortable. In our parents’ day, doctors would give their dying patients enough drugs to relieve the pain. Of course, this also made them drowsy and they slept a lot. And if it helped them on their way, no one thought it wrong.

In the last six weeks of David’s life a pattern developed. He would get pneumonia, be admitted to hospital, they would give him antibiotics, he would recover, be sent home. And a week or two later, he’d be admitted again.

With only a fortnight or so to go, David’s wife discharged him, thinking it would be easier to care for him at home. They lived in a two-bedroom house and their four children came to spend their father’s last days with him. There were some good times. When the morphine was doing its job, David would be pain-free, surrounded by his family, joking, or (unusual for him) telling them how they had enriched his life and how much he loved them. That is how dying should be. And proper palliative care allows that – the space and time for the dying and the grieving to say those things they need to say, to give each other reassurance, comfort and love.

But mostly it was not like that. The four children and beloved wife’s memories should be of those good times. But for David’s family, I fear they are overlaid by the memories of the one hour in four of agony for David, and anguish and helplessness for them.

Two of my nieces, separately and unknown to each other, pleaded with the agency nurses who came twice daily to increase the morphine dose. But they could not, any more than the hospital nurses could. One said, “If you knew how many times we are asked that! We would willingly do it. All over the country, in and out of hospitals, people are suffering like your dad. It’s so unnecessary, but no one admits it’s happening.”

David’s wife and children took turns to be with him night and day. One of his daughters told me she’d sat for half an hour with a pillow in her hands, trying to screw her courage to the sticking place. But she could not suffocate her own dad.

In the end, David, determined to end the pain, refused any more antibiotics, so allowing the next dose of pneumonia to kill him. Dying of pneumonia is a horrible death. Basically you drown, slowly and painfully, as your lungs fill with mucus and you cannot breathe. David’s family had to endure the sound of laboured breathing for the last five days, a constant loud “death rattle”. They had to bear the sight of their father and husband, thick green discharge running from mouth and nose, veering from semi-coma to excruciating pain.

Death is always distressing, but in 2012, with all our talk of respect and consideration for others, how can it be that a wife ends up praying for her husband to please, please, just die?

Surely all that is needed is something like a hospital protocol that if the patient and the next of kin want to end the misery, and two doctors agree that the patient will be dead in a month anyway, they can increase the dose of drugs to the level sufficient to alleviate the pain, even at the risk of death.

If that is a step too far, can we not at least accept Lord Joffe’s proposed Bill, which would allow, if not “mercy killing”, at least “assisted suicide”? This would make it lawful for doctors to prescribe, though not to administer, a drug that would cause death. The patient would have to request it, and take it while still capable of doing so.

The present state of affairs is monstrous. With 80 per cent of the population in favour of assisted dying, what are they waiting for?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9633356/Prue-Leith-asks-Why-did-my-brother-die-in-agony.html

Posted: 17-09-2013 12:39 Post subject:

Stephen Hawking speaks out about assisted suicide
[Video - Prof Stephen Hawking on why he wanted the film made]

UK cosmologist Prof Stephen Hawking has publicly said he backs the notion of assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses.
In an interview with the BBC he said: "We don't let animals suffer, so why humans?"

Prof Hawking, who has the progressive condition motor neurone disease, has in the past been less candid about the idea, saying "there is always hope".
But he stressed that there must be safeguards to prevent abuse.

Prof Hawking himself was once put on a life support machine which his wife was given the option of switching off.
When asked if family members of those who wish to die should be able to assist without fear of prosecution, Prof Hawking said yes.
But he added: "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."

Hawking, 71, is one of the world's most famous scientists.
Aside from his academic accolades, the Prof learned to adapt to life after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given two years to live when he married his first wife, Jane, in 1964.
Only 5% of people with the form of MND that he has - a condition called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease - survive for more than a decade after diagnosis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24123679

Posted: 03-10-2013 10:08 Post subject:

A very sad case:

Belgian killed by euthanasia after a botched sex change operation
A Belgian has been killed by medical euthanasia after pleading for death because a botched sex change operation to turn her into a man had resulted in "a monster".
By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels
11:11AM BST 01 Oct 2013

Nathan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering" on Monday afternoon.
Wim Distelmans, a cancer specialist who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who late last year gave lethal injections to congenitally deaf twins who were frightened they were also going blind.

"I was the girl that nobody wanted," Mr Verhelst told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper in the hours before her death.
"While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom. 'If only you had been a boy', my mother complained. I was tolerated, nothing more."

Mr Verhelst had hormone therapy in 2009, followed by a mastectomy and surgery to construct a penis in 2012. But "none of these operations worked as desired".
"I was ready to celebrate my new birth," he told the newspaper. "But when I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be... a monster. "

The case will revive Belgium's debate over medical euthanasia as statistics show a steep year on year increase in the number of patients killed by doctors after a request to die.
Belgium recorded a record number of 1,432 cases of euthanasia in 2012, up 25 per cent from the previous year and the country is currently deciding whether to extend "mercy killing" legislation to children.

Professor Distelmans, who carried the euthanasia of Mr Verhelst, is the same doctor who last December gave lethal injections to twins Marc and Eddy Verbessem, 45.
The two brothers were both born deaf and asked for euthanasia after finding that they might also both go blind. After having their request to die refused by their local hospital, Prof. Distelmans accepted on the grounds of 'unbearable psychological suffering'.

"The choice of Nathan Verhelst has nothing to do with fatigue of life," said Dr Distelmans. "There are other factors that meant he was in a situation with incurable, unbearable suffering. Unbearable suffering for euthanasia can be both physical and psychological. This was a case that clearly met the conditions demanded by the law. Nathan underwent counseling for six months."

Last week, figures showed that the number of Dutch people killed by medical euthanasia has more than doubled in the 10 years since legislation was changed to permit it, rising 13 per cent last year to 4,188.
Euthanasia carried out by doctors at the request of a patient is only legal in three European countries, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10346616/Belgian-killed-by-euthanasia-after-a-botched-sex-change-operation.html

See also:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10349159/Mother-of-sex-change-Belgian-I-dont-care-about-his-euthanasia-death.html

Posted: 03-10-2013 20:15 Post subject:

Very sad. The mother sounds like a horrible woman.

Posted: 04-10-2013 07:44 Post subject:

In a world where everything has to be scrutinised, I suppose the habit of the more humane old doctors of gradually increasing the levels of morphine for a terminally ill patient in terrible pain is now unacceptable.

Yet starving them to death is apparently OK.

Our egos no longer allow us to accept someone else's individual judgement in such a situation. It has to be a pathway or a protocol or some such.

'Patients killed by doctors after requesting to die'

There is something about that statement I find horribly prejudicial. I'm not in favour of suicide at all, whether assisted or otherwise, but its a debate we need to have without preconception, as we have changed the rules ourselves to prevent medicos from applying what we might call 'humane terminal care' which in years past would have been seen as a right thing to do.

Posted: 04-10-2013 11:53 Post subject:

Cochise: "we have changed the rules ourselves to prevent medicos from applying what we might call 'humane terminal care' "

I'm sure you are right to say that the current agonizing over the issue shows a retreat in our trust of the professionals. One of those professionals was named Shipton, of course. Sad

I don't think it's just ego.

Posted: 04-10-2013 11:58 Post subject:

Humane terminal care is one thing but giving someone a lethal injection because they don't like the way their sex change turned out is something else entirely. I was pretty shocked by this story and that such a thing could be legal.

Posted: 04-10-2013 12:32 Post subject:

Posted: 04-10-2013 19:16 Post subject: