Diana Melly webchat for Dignity In Dying, Monday 26 March, 11am-noon

Carol this is a subject I am very passionate about so I am happy to post and answer any comments

I feel it is too important to sit back and ignore

It is the future for our children and our grandchildren that is why I see it as so important

You will find there are some kindred spirits on here Lydia. Why not start a separate thread about that issue of the children and their bereaved parents, and confine this debate to the one about Diana Melly's visit and assisted dying.

The comment was made originally to simply show that although I believe most of heath professionals are wonderful people I still believe they are capable of doing wrong I am happy to not make anymore comments about it

Lydia, why do you think you have the right to tell a bereaved mother that she must continue living? Surely that is her choice, and should not be dependent on your religious view of life?
Had my daughters died in dreadful circumstances, none of your compassionate people would have made the slightest difference to MY decision.
I have no desire or need to force you to do anything that makes you unhappy. I merely ask you to show the same humility - it is not your place to decide whether somebody can be comforted or not.
As for taking tissue and organs from a dead child, that was clumsily done and nobody has defended it, but I am sure if the parents had been approached in a proper fashion they would have agreed, as they would want to help in the search for cures or treatment for disease.
I really think you need to stop dragging in irrelevant issues.

GREATNAN

I think you have completely missed my point

i am not saying I do have the right to tell a young mother to live

I am saying if she had been given love and the correct help she would not have wanted to die

Do you think it has not crossed the mind of many parents who have lost children or adults who have lost loved ones that they want to be with them

The point is that setting aside any religious view that to help kill an otherwise healthy young woman is a complete waste of a young life

Most of all it is a dereliction of duty of care because the doctors should have found some help for that young woman

That is not just my view that is the view of most folk otherwise we would offer the same service and not look on that situation with such horror

Again setting aside religion I made the point that with death their is no going back it is final

You also stated
As for taking tissue and organs from a dead child, that was clumsily done and nobody has defended it, but I am sure if the parents had been approached in a proper fashion they would have agreed, as they would want to help in the search for cures or treatment for disease.
I really think you need to stop dragging in irrelevant issues.

clumsily done --- again shows a total lack of understanding and want to understand

And remember i did not bring up the subject again you did

Had you read the above posts you will see it was brought in as were a number of issues to show that the medical profession while extremely good are not perfect

Your posts about the taking of organs were made whilst I was typing so I had not read them when I posted. It would have been helpful if you had told us about your loss and grief right at the start then we would have been able to understand your position and suspicion of the medical profession more easily. Believe me, having stood by my daughter's bed for four hours watching her vomiting litres of blood from a punctured stomach and being told that no consultant was available on a Friday evening, I have every reason to be wary of doctors and the whole system, but this thread is not really about medical treatment, is it? It is about people who do not wish to live, for whatever reason, being given the right to make their own decision.
We cannot know that the young mother would have been able to live with her grief but I still do not believe that we should force other people to live against their wishes because we think it is right.

I realised from the beginning that you must have gone through an awful experience with death
I really feel for you it must have been heartbreaking for you
But with the greatest of respect so have I twice with children and also with my parents
So have many folk
That does not give me or any other person the right to make decisions which will make life mean less
"suspicion of the medical profession"
I have no undue suspicion about the medical profession I have more to thank them for than to criticise them for but neither am i unrealistic about them
This subject is as much about the medical profession as it is about the right to die because it is the medical profession who will be trusted with the care of folk who want to die
They will make the "decisions on whether a person will die"
I think this way if that had been my daughter or my son or me who wanted to die because of loss of loved ones then for my children and for me I would want all the help this world and my god could give

I certainly would not want a doctor with nothing else but money on their mind to decide it was better to let them or me die

When we make laws for our country we must look at every possible consequence

Our medical treatment may not be perfect but it will not be enhanced by giving the right to kill which will eventually be used to save money in the NHS

While we in Scotland are lucky SNP will never allow the sale of our NHS the English NHS has just been sold
It is within reason to assume that many will soon depend on the private sector for medical care and they will not have any feelings of compassion

Thank you, Geraldine. Could we also ask if there is anything we can do to help apart from signing the various e-petitions and writing to MPs.

good question, Geraldine. A lot of opinions have been aired on this thread (mine included) and not enough questions asked. I'm still trying to think of one.

There has been quite a lot of discussion of religion on this thread - so I'd like to ask what is Dignity In Dying's relationship to the various religious bodies in the country? have you approached them and if so what has their reaction been?

You just beat me to it, getmehrt. I would also like to know if she has come under any pressure from religious lobby groups.

I have a friend who is a hospital consultant and she tells me that doctors quite often commit suicide when they are terminally ill. They use potassium chloride, I think (I would have to double check!) which is undetectable in the blood stream and looks like cardiac arrest. If this is true - and I trust my friend - then it seems doctors are already making the choice in some cases. Incidentally my friend is a pretty devout Catholic but says she would do this if she were terminally ill and facing great pain and indignity.

So I wanted to ask - are you familiar with this and doesn't it seem unfair that doctors who can get hold of drugs can do it but not the rest of us?

I would like to ask Diana about the attitude of the medical profession to the idea of assisted suicide. I think I have heard that the BMA is against it as a policy but that individual doctors sometimes will unofficially give that little extra help to a dying patient.

I am in favour of assisted suicide, but I do have one worry, which is that it could play into ageist assumptions that old people are not valuable for themselves, and the only people who are really valuable in our society are the ones who can work. There's the idea - often quoted - of Eskimo old people going off into the snow to die. (In fact, I don't think this is actually true). Lots of people seem to think this is a good idea and joke about it approvingly.
As a campaigning organisation, how do you emphasise the intrinsic value of older people at the same time as saying that they may well choose to die?

How much dignity is there in the Swiss method? I read somewhere that you have to be filmed and to be upright for the drugs to work. This seems less than ideal. Would it be different if assisted suicide were made legal in this country?

Someone mentioned Harold Shipman further up this thread. Has the Shipman case made it much more difficult for doctors to 'help people on their way' in the way that they used to - very often at their own request and out of the kindest motives?

Good morning Diana

Do you think people suffering from dementia, as opposed to physical illness, should be assisted to a quicker death by health professionals?

The big question with assisted suicide is how to protect vulnerable people. What is Dignity In Dying's position on this - are you confident that if the law is changed, there won't be abuse?

Do you think that assisted dying will have any impact on end of life care? one of my worries is that a change in the law might let the government off the hook from providing top quality palliative care and enabling a good non-assisted suicide death to those who need it.