Right-to-Die campaign accelerating ?

[Cool Middle Name]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17336774

This man wants the option to be able to have assisted suicide to the extent that it is classified as murder beause he is too disabled to poison himself.

Assisted suicide, even with appropriate circumstances regarding patients' quality of life, is currently illegal here in the UK. Sir Terry Pratchett is one of many campaigners who wants to make assisted suicide legal here so that he doesn't have to travel in his later days as he succumbs to his disabilities, when he may not be able to. Assisted suicide in here would prevent people being pressurised into assisted suicide too soon because they may not get the chance when their life deteriorates too much.

 

[MongoGutman]

I'm not so sure about "legalising" assissted suicide, except on a very limited case-by-case basis, where each case is decided by a panel on it's own merits and in it's own context. But that's not what would happen is it? The gowns and wigs like their rules and precedents and guidlines and generalisations too much.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

This isn't suicide because the guy literally can't do it himself - it's elective self-assassination because he wants to have someone to kill him basically and yes that would need legislation.

The whole assisted suicide/death row revolves around rationality and the persons legal ability to choose to die. To make matters worse this poor chap functions perfectly mentally but is almost completely paralysed and cannot talk except through artificial means - so he knows what he wants but if a doctor agrees to administer a lethal dose so he can die in peace then it would technically be murder, because the man isn't dying of natural causes. Yet. Currently if such a thing happens, legally a medical professional who terminates a 'viable' life can be prosecuted and jailed whether or not the patient wanted to die.

In practice when medics are prosecuted this gratuitously puts everyone connected with the death on trial and so we're now at this stage where, to get the law changed people like this brave gentleman have to go to court well in advance to get their rigth to say when they can die debated and ratified while they're still in good enough 'health'. Taking a life as a medical necessity happens all time on the operating table or in hospices where there is an acceptance that life is close to extinction and that treatment/surgery is a necessary or appropriate risk. If a doctor takes a step away from that and adminsters a procedure purely to cause a death that is NOT medically imminent then that is techcially a killing and so we have to have case law whereby it can be established that there are allowable circumstances for legalising killing/euthanasia or assisted death/suicide as a properly administered option that can't be abused in cases where the reason for wanting to die is less clear-cut or downright criminal. People are right to be sceptical about it as vulnerable patients could be exploited and endangered in some circumstances.

The more often people who are definite and wanting this right seek it through the courts the better, as eventually it will have to be legislated centrally, as it becomes clear that modern society needs this on statute as a basic Human Right - but it should never be taken as a normal medical option without first establishing the full consent of the person affected and possibly their nearest kin.