David Quinn
The latest push in the culture of death would normalise suicide, writes David Quinn
This week a new bill called the ‘Dying with Dignity Bill 2020’ was brought before the Dáil. It has been introduced by left-wing TD, Gino Kenny. Don’t be fooled by the title. All of us want to die with dignity. This bill is about assisted suicide.
Don’t be fooled either by terms like ‘assisted dying’. What does this even mean? When my father died in 2015, aged 88, after a long illness, his four children wanted him to die with dignity, in the care of doctors and nurses and with the minimum of discomfort. In other words, he was receiving much assistance in his dying days. He was fed, hydrated and received whatever medication was needed, including morphine towards the very end. But the morphine was intended to kill whatever pain he was in, not him.
The irony is that the Kenny Bill was discussed in the Dáil the very week after International Suicide Awareness Day was marked. The purpose of the day is to reduce the incidence of suicide in society, but the Kenny Bill, would authorise, mandate, make normal, a certain type of suicide.
Equally ironic was the fact that this week is Palliative Care Week.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines palliative care as follows: “Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.”
Offering to end a patient’s life early through a lethal drug is no part of palliative care. In fact, it is its very antithesis.
As the WHO says, palliative care “intends neither to hasten or postpone death”.
Palliative care is exactly what my father received as he succumbed to dementia and other illnesses. It is often provided in hospices, but is commonplace in many settings, including in your own home.
Support
How can you possibly mark Palliative Care Week and at the same time countenance assisted suicide?
The Kenny Bill does not have the support of the Government, but there has been precious little objection to it either and there is the possibility of a free vote being allowed. What would happen then?
Kenny pretends that his Bill is ‘restrictive’. It is nothing of the kind, and as usual the media have given him only soft interviews and have not properly examined what he is proposing.
Most people who have heard about the Bill probably think it is aimed almost entirely at cancer patients nearing the end of life, but this is not the case. (Not that the Bill could be justified on this ground either).
The way it defines ‘terminal illness’ is extremely broad.
Here is what is says. “A person is terminally ill if that person has been diagnosed by a registered medical practitioner as having an incurable and progressive illness which cannot be reversed by treatment, and the person is likely to die as a result of that illness or complications relating thereto”.
What might an “incurable and progressive illness” be? The Bill does not say, but conditions like MS, Parkinson’s Disease and Motor Neuron Disease come to mind, but many others can probably be listed including forms of heart disease that will eventually end your life.
Notice as well that the definition uses the word “likely” as in “likely to die”. What does “likely” mean here? Does it mean a 51% chance of dying as “a result of that illness or complication relating thereto”?
Note also that there is no stipulation a person should be within days, weeks, or even months of death.
It signals to such people that their lives are no longer really worth living…”
As written, a person could be diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease tomorrow and apply for assisted suicide the next day.
What this law would tell anyone with a progressive illness deemed likely to kill them is that they are a suitable candidate for suicide. It signals to such people that their lives are no longer really worth living. If we thought otherwise, we wouldn’t even consider giving doctors permission to help them end their lives.
This is why almost all palliative care doctors are opposed to assisted suicide. They are the very people who deal with those nearing the end of their lives or who are suffering from a terminal illness. If this was all about ‘compassion’, then why aren’t these doctors supporting assisted suicide?
The reason is because they know from their own experience that everyone can die with dignity without the need to deliberately end their lives, and they are also acutely aware of the terrible signal legalising assisted suicide would give to vulnerable people.
The bill would force palliative care doctors, among others, to cooperate with something they are deeply opposed”
Another ‘safeguard’ offered by the Bill is that two doctors must sign off before assisted suicide can be authorised. But this means all that is needed is for two doctors anywhere in the country to sign such a form and as many assisted suicides can take place as they see fit.
The Bill also offers scant protection for conscientious objection. A doctor doesn’t have to sign an assisted suicide permission form, but must refer a patient on to a doctor who will. This is appalling. It would force palliative care doctors, among others, to cooperate with something they are deeply opposed to in principle, something they find repugnant.
Prescription
Finally, the Bill refers to the “prescription of substance or substances” to the patient aimed at ending their life. In ordinary language, such a substance is a deadly poison.
In other words, doctors will be authorised to give their patients not medication, not something aimed at curing them or relieving symptoms, but a poison directly intended to kill them.
This would totally invert the meaning of medicine. The Kenny Bill, in whatever form, must be strongly and totally rejected in the name of patient dignity and the good name of the medical profession.