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Suicide and euthanasia
October 2009
Thursday 30 July 2009 was a sad day for many of us here in the UK. This was the day that the Law Lords decided in favour of assisted suicide in the case of Ms. Debbie Purdy. This means that the Director of Public Prosecutions will produce a policy statement setting out when those who assist suicide can expect to face prosecution. It will also state who has a "right to want to die", for example the terminally-ill and disabled people in pain. Their "assistants" will not be prosecuted.
When the 1967 Abortion Act was passed, many pro-lifers prophesied that euthanasia would be the next thing to be legalised. If you can kill the "unwanted" unborn child, why not have "unwanted" grannies persuaded that their lives are meaningless, too burdensome etc. There will be many ways to get then to agree.
The pro-death lobby will, no doubt, proclaim that all is fair and reasonable. Why shouldn't Debbie Purdy's husband be able to take her to the dingy flat in Zurich where a Dignitas official mixes up the poison for her to drink down? I do not think anyone has been imprisoned for taking someone to Switzerland to commit suicide. This is just a convenient test-case to push the envelope for euthanasia and assisted suicide. Already there have been attempts to legalise both things in Westminster and Holyrood. There will doubtless be many more attempts.
The advocates for euthanasia claim that their case is good and that it is all about individual choice (echoes of abortion argument here). Why shouldn't we have a RIGHT to decide when and where to die? Firstly, most people do not have the intestinal fortitude to kill themselves. God has put that survival mode into us. Then, many might only want to die when they are so incapacitated that they need assistance. Here is the rub: it is not just about the individual who wants to end their life, it is about the one helping out as well (and in fact all of society).
I worked for a Japanese company in Australia for eleven years. In 1975, when I made my first business-trip to Japan, I was asked at an English conversation club I was invited to: "What is the suicide rate amongst Australian teenagers?" I was quite taken back by this, as the suicide rate in Australia then for teenagers was miniscule. In Japan, however if you failed your university entrance exams, suicide was a real option. This experience in Japan gave me a good understanding of something called a suicide cluster. Below is an example from my good friend Brian Johnston's excellent book "Death as a salesman":
Mount Mihara is a volcanic mountain on the island of Oshima, Japan. In January of 1933, two students jumped into the fiery pit, convinced that the lava would cremate them and the smoke transport then to heaven. Reporters became very interested in the story, and several repeat suicides followed. There were more news stories, and overnight Oshima became a national attraction. Tourism to the tiny island increased dramatically. Crowds were now coming to see the suicides rather than the volcano. New ferry boats were constructed to bring the crowds to view the site.
Record has it that on one occasion a man dared someone from the crowd of tourists to jump and somebody did! On the first Sunday of April 1933, six persons took the plunge to end it all while 25 others were prevented by the use of physical force. By the end of 1933 Mihara had claimed 143 lives.
By 1934, police had noted that they had forcibly prevented 1,200 such deaths. An anti-suicide league was formed, yet 619 persons still jumped to their deaths in 1936. Eventually guards and a high barbed-wire fence helped to put an end to the morbid epidemic.
Commenting on this and the diversity of suicide clusters, Howard Rosenthal says in his book "Preventing your suicide and that of others": 'Suicide, seemingly is contagious. If you have one suicide in a school, business, prison, or even in a volcano, the odds increase that you will have others. When a person who is unhappy sees another flee the pain of everyday life via suicide, the person seems now to have permission to do so himself or herself. And though the second, third or hundredth person to take his or her own life does not always know the other persons who killed themselves, he or she knows of them.'
So if someone you know talks about how they would like help to die when they are very ill, mention the effect on everyone else, as "no man is an island unto himself".
Then you will hear about how all the controls are working so well in the Netherlands. I have been to The Netherlands many times to meetings about euthanasia and the stories you hear about people being killed without asking for it would scare you almost to death. I would NEVER let a Dutch doctor give me an injection of anything, thank you very much.
My good friend Bill Saunders gives the following summary on The Netherlands:
"Advocates also point to the experience of The Netherlands to reassure us: The evidence from the Netherlands, where VE (voluntary euthanasia) and PAS (physician-assisted suicide) have been legally permitted since1984, confirms that VE and PAS can be brought out into the open and subjected to effective control. But the evidence is to the contrary.
"Under Dutch law, VE and PAS are legally permitted at the 'explicit request' of the patient to put an end to 'unbearable suffering'. The law requires the doctor before performing VE/PAS, to consult with an independent doctor and, after performing VE/PAS, to call in the local medical examiner and file a report.
"Nevertheless, the iron reality is that the Dutch guidelines have been widely flouted, that the Dutch have slid down the slippery slope, and that they have done so with remarkable rapidity.
"Since 1990 four Dutch government-sponsored surveys of end-of-life decision making by Dutch doctors have been carried out (covering 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2005 respectively). The surveys have shown that in thousands of cases doctors have broken the legal and professional guidelines regulating VE/PAS, not least the requirement that doctors report each case to the authorities. The first survey showed that in 1990 over 80 percent of cases went unreported and were instead illegally certified by doctors as deaths from 'natural causes'. The latest survey shows that, in 2005, 80 percent of cases were reported, but that 20 percent of cases were still illegally certified as death from 'natural causes'.
"The first survey disclosed a widespread incidence of non-voluntary euthanasia. In 1990 no fewer than 1000 patients were given a lethal injection without having made an explicit request. The latest survey shows that although in 2005 the figure was lower, still 500 patients were given a lethal injection without request.
"Now the Dutch authorities warn that patients may be euthanized unless they make it clear that they do not want it."
We forget so easily the horrible lesson from history. The German euthanasia programme did not start with the Final Solution. It began when a father wrote to Hitler to ask if his severely mentally and physically handicapped child could be killed. Hitler agreed, and so a precedent was established. Then the mental asylums were emptied of their inmates and the technology for mass killing established. Once you have one human life deemed as "not worthy to lived", how do you stop it? Then you have people assigned to decide for those who cannot speak for themselves. Then whole classes can be declared sub-human.
We will no doubt be told that we can of course trust our doctors, they would never let things get out of control. Well, David Steel re-assured us that his private members' bill on abortion was only for the difficult cases. We all know that we now effectively have abortion on demand in Great Britain. People are all very silent about Dr. Harold Shipman now. He killed many old women, and one wonders why. This is my guess: he enjoyed killing them. God has built into us a conscience that hinders us from killing another human being. However once you have killed someone, you are a changed person.
I would like to recount a conversation I once had with the Professor Lord Ian McColl in Westminster. He was on a House of Lords select committee on euthanasia in the early 1990s. They were in the Netherlands to see how the euthanasia programme actually worked. They interviewed a doctor who performed euthanasia. Someone asked: "Doctor, what was it like the first time you euthanized a patient?" The doctor went into a long discussion about how hard it was, how he couldn't sleep the night before or the night after, how someone had to drive him to and from the patients' home etc. Then providentially someone asked: "Doctor, what was it like the second time?" His stark reply terrified them as he said: "A piece of cake". Once an inhibition is overcome, be very afraid of that person. Lord McColl said that, at that point, the people on the committee became very anti-euthanasia.
On a personal note, I would like to share that my father was a manic depressive and committed suicide when I was 8 years of age, leaving a widow and 4 young children behind. I see suicide as self-murder, and a breach of the sixth commandment that we should do no murder. It is a terrible thing to have suicide in your family.
Please pray that the Lord will have mercy on us and spare us from a culture of death in the UK.
For helpful pro-life information that is very up-to-date I would commend the following two blogs:
http://spuc-director.blogspot.com/
http://disabilitymatters.blogspot.com/
