Patient-Assisted Suicide

As one who often cares for people who suffer from some terminal diseases such as leukaemia or myeloma, who gets involved in hushed discussions with patients and relatives about the end of life and how it should be managed...... I'm very sad that I am being asked, just now and then, to help end a life, and feel that if the law were changed this would destroy, forever the trust I now enjoy with human beings such as these. A quest for help with ending their own life, takes away forever any doctor- patient relationship For the worse. It spells the end of it.. Each patient with a ‘final illness’ or even a chronic disabling one like cancer, heart attack, Alzheimer's begins to feel the pressure to request this euthanasia, which is suicide’ assisted by the patient, perhaps in the coercive hope of ending a noticeable burden on family, perhaps society, by not continuing to be around. Many will begin to wonder whether they should talk about this euthanasia. Oh, the pressure, to do what's 'fair '. And is it good enough to say that there will be the safeguard of two doctors, a cooling off, and prayer, consultation? Yes, we need better dying in today's world. After all, we deserve better than our forefathers. Or do we? A better death can be achieved, not by the building of hospices, improved palliative care, more qualified staff, education of all, but by the provision of narcotics to make, as the song says, the pain go away. There is no need for euthanasia, for suicide, for that nudge that is good for all concerned, and most of all, to end the suffering. Death, you are the enemy, no doctor ever should consider fraternising with you, the helping hand that you require must come from either God or on the other side from El Diablo. Only those two can be exempt from being murderers.