Our world has changed forever - assisted dying bill

Ilovecheese

I am concerned as well. Older people are quite unpopular at the moment, younger generations are resentful that we were able to buy property more easily that they can.
Some of the threads on the sister site are quite bitter about their parents.

Have you read the bill?

People think individual choice wont have an impact on society as a whole. It's a very individualistic approach.

My worry is that an individuals view can change, over time, or on the spin of a coin.
Putting something in writing won't stop that from happening.

Will it even be an option to decide "actually, I feel I can go on for a bit longer, I still have a couple of things I enjoy, even if they are different from to those I enjoyed previously"?

A friend of ours suffered dreadful pain from prostate cancer that had spread to his spine. He could apparently not be given sufficient morphine to control it, because an adequate dose was likely to be lethal. This was in Australia BTW.
It was beyond cruel.

gentleshores

I know people have different views though. But when I was a child it was a Christian country and this would never have been considered the right thing. Different people have different beliefs - moral and religious. I will be looking into a living will quite carefully as it scares me. It's bad enough when people ignore you or treat you as brainless and look over you just because you're disabled.

But people will have the choice - that's the whole point. If it conflicts with someone's moral or religious views, that's fine - but why should those views hold sway over those who don't hold the same views?

I was really please to hear that this bill had passed it's first reading.
I'm disabled btw.
I agree with Dickens on the ills of free-market liberalism btw.
I'm just so for people having choice about this, & if anything more resources will go into pallitive care because this subject has been debated.

Thank goodness all discrimination and inequality have vanished with regards to access to medical care, we can be assured therefore that the most vulnerable wont be impacted.

I hear you.

My concern is this law would be an alternative to providing care. Where is the incentive to give people the care they need when leaving them suffering gives them the "quick option".

There is a woman in Canada - paraplegic I think - who was offered the option to end her life when they wouldn't provide her with a stairlift. She said she just couldn't manage life without one and apparently she was offered the option to end her life.

So while I understand the views of those who welcome it, it is such a slippery slope to abuse.

I would have felt more comfortable with the passing of this bill into its next stage if the economic and social background of our society had been different.

As it stands, we have been governed since 1979 by successive governments that - regardless of whether Tory or Labour - have supported the free-market-small-state economic model.

That has meant the decline of all of our social, welfare and health services - to the point where the NHS is considered to be on its knees and tens of thousands of terminally ill people cannot access palliative care at the end of their lives.

Pensioners are frequently referred to as "bed-blockers" because there isn't a sufficient framework in place to care for them when they are ready to leave hospital. Sick and disabled people are frequently castigated on social media, and questioned as to the veracity of their sickness/disability in the media. The unemployed - the economically inactive - are viewed with suspicion. And on a personal level - younger people are often only able to get on the housing ladder courtesy of the bank of Mum and Dad, or when Mum and Dad leave them an inheritance. Such is the state of our housing market - where two adults working full-time, and sometimes even taking on a third job, are necessary requirements to put food on the table and pay the extortionate rents of the rental market.

I think our world changed for ever when we went down the road to free-market liberalism and ended the cohesion of society by embracing individualism over community. And tacitly or deliberately supported the dismantling of the welfare and health services in order to support it.

So, is it any wonder that some are afraid that there might be coercion to end a life that has become 'inconvenient'? Or regard themselves as a "burden" on their family or wider society?

When the time comes, unless you are pretty wealthy, no-one knows for sure where they will draw their last breath; whether they will be lucky enough to have navigated the lottery of hospice-care, or end up behind a curtain in a bed on a ward overseen by an insufficient number of nurses and doctors; or at home waiting for the over-stretched community nurse and doctor visits.

Along with this bill, I would have preferred to see this addressed as a major issue. But it won't be, we are too far down the rabbit-hole. There will of course be a few £million to "improve" hospice and palliative-care, but it will be a sticking-plaster. The dice was thrown, the move was made, and here we are, and no-one knows where they will be in those last few months of life or whether their pain will be controlled or whether like my late-friend, they will be left in a urine-soaked bed, crying in pain because their opiates were long overdue... not because those working in the hospice were uncaring, but because there were not enough of them to do the caring.

I can see both points of view, and I'm uncomfortable with both.

I know people have different views though. But when I was a child it was a Christian country and this would never have been considered the right thing. Different people have different beliefs - moral and religious. I will be looking into a living will quite carefully as it scares me. It's bad enough when people ignore you or treat you as brainless and look over you just because you're disabled.

gentleshores

It was a palliative care Dr (Dr Rachel Clarke - she goes public on a lot of issues) who said it was very rare for someone to have uncontrollable pain - in a hospice environment with the right palliative care. Without that then yes a lot of people will suffer. I may be cynical but I think assisted dying is the "cheap option" rather than funding hospices. I've also seen hospice work and they can keep people pain free and with quality of life and also legally use sedation if needed.

I hear the arguments but I'd be very concerned - especially as the bill doesn't even state which drug is used and there's scientific report I read said there's a risk that patients could have a distressing death. There are various drugs and two main ones are expensive. There's an alternative "cocktail" which is cheaper but isn't always that quick.

I think the whole thing is right for abuse. Why not just properly fund and regulate hospice care - to ease last days. Because it would cost a lot of money.

I would like the option of not having to spend my last days in a hospice.

Also, and I don't mean to be crass - some people take their life into their own hands anyway - why ask a Doctor? But other people can't think clearly or are vulnerable and I also worry about coercion. And the attitude to old sick people.

It was a palliative care Dr (Dr Rachel Clarke - she goes public on a lot of issues) who said it was very rare for someone to have uncontrollable pain - in a hospice environment with the right palliative care. Without that then yes a lot of people will suffer. I may be cynical but I think assisted dying is the "cheap option" rather than funding hospices. I've also seen hospice work and they can keep people pain free and with quality of life and also legally use sedation if needed.

I hear the arguments but I'd be very concerned - especially as the bill doesn't even state which drug is used and there's scientific report I read said there's a risk that patients could have a distressing death. There are various drugs and two main ones are expensive. There's an alternative "cocktail" which is cheaper but isn't always that quick.

I think the whole thing is right for abuse. Why not just properly fund and regulate hospice care - to ease last days. Because it would cost a lot of money.

I have just seen the list of MPs voting and was pleased to see my MP voted against.

I did contact her about it so feel glad I had expressed my opinion and that she agreed with me!

I do think we opened a pandora's box here but it did seem almost inevitable it would be approved.

What a strange world we live in where people are fighting for their lives and other people are fighting to die... I just don't get it.

I can assure you as an ex palliative care nurse that patients still suffer incredible pain in a hospice! I actually worked in one of the ones that was featured in the ITV programme last night.

I am delighted that this bill has been passed.We are not all going to be killed off for goodness sake!

I live in a nursing home, I am troubled by the passing of this bill.

I don’t agree that uncontrollable pain in the late stage of terminal illness is rare. We cause hideous distress to people who are desperate to die rather than suffer any longer. The relatives of mine whose pain was absolutely not controlled would definitely both have chosen earlier death. I’m glad of today’s vote.

My disability isn't rare and nor is the level of pain it's causing. Not only am I on high dose of Morphine from my GP and constantly telling them it helps but not enough so on top of that I'm paying to privately access medical cannabis to the tune of £200 per month which is likely to increase.
I'm not concerned about the bill, I think here are enough safeguards and I don't feel vulnerable.

Grannybags

I don’t think it’s rare either

Neither do I.

I am concerned as well. Older people are quite unpopular at the moment, younger generations are resentful that we were able to buy property more easily that they can.
Some of the threads on the sister site are quite bitter about their parents.

There is a thread running on this under News and Politics.
There are plenty of examples and in my experience extreme pain and suffering at the end of life is not rare, it’s harrowing.

petal53 I agree with you

Our world hasn’t changed forever. In Europe alone there are 6 countries who practice this in one way or another.
It’s the only humane way for people in extreme pain to have the right to ask for help to dye.

I am pleased the Bill has been passed. Watched a dear friend die a very painful and undignified death. I have a terminal illness myself and when my time comes it gives me comfort to know I will be in control of my last days.

I’m concerned. I used to be really for assisted death, but over time, and as I’ve grown older, I have more reservations about it. I’m concerned about coercion. As Dianne Abbot said in Parliament today, no one can see coercion. I know that’s true because I didn’t see it properly in my daughter’s marriage, so how can anyone know if a person has been coerced into requesting assisted death? The medics could be coercive, the family could be coercive. Also how does anyone know that a person has only six months to live? Many have outlived this type of prediction. But the thing that bothers me most is that the conditions will be widened, as has happened elsewhere.
It’s all very worrying.