Purdy Tries Again…
2 Jun, 09 | by Iain Brassington
Debbie Purdy goes to the House of Lords today to seek assurance that her husband won’t be prosecuted for assisting suicide should he accompany her to the Dignitas clinic. It’s hard not to sympathise with her request - but, speaking on the Today programme this morning, former DPP Sir Ken MacDonald said that he hoped her bid failed. And, at least from a legal point of view, I think he might be right. In essence, his point is that there’s something wrong with going to court to get permission in advance to break the law.
He added, though - also correctly - that there’s a very good reason to review the law. MacDonald came over as thoughtful and insightful - and a whole lot more impressive than George Pitcher, who had spoken on the same topic a little over an hour earlier. Quite why he should have been given airtime is beyond me - his qualifications seem simply to be that (a) he’s religious affairs editor of the Telegraph and (b) the BBC seems to think that you can’t have ethics without a large slice of religion (just have a look at this page to see what I mean). Still - there he was. And, lordy, did he talk some bollocks - which is appropriate enough. Worse, it was tired, hackneyed, and false bollocks.
There were several claims: that allowing PAS or euthanasia is socially harmful and undermines the “social fabric” - whatever that is; that it diminishes the importance of death as a part of human life; that it undermines palliative care; that this point can be proved by looking at Holland and its non-existent palliative care system; and that allowing PAS or euthanasia for the ill will inevitably lead to its being available to the healthy.
Let’s deal with the last point first. It’s false - there’s no reason to suppose that the two things’d be linked at all; and that leaves open, of course, the question of just why it’d be so wrong for a healthy person who wanted to die for some reason to be able to seek assistance. I simply don’t see why not [insert blatant pimping of own work here].
Does PAS/ euthanasia undermine palliative care? Again: I don’t see why it should. Some people will prefer not to be killed just yet; others will want to cash in their chips. Oh - and the claim about Dutch hospices is simply false. Even a quick and shoddy internet search seems to indicate that, far from there being no such thing, there’s an increasing number, and that they enjoy government support - which could be construed by someone less charitable than I as an indication that Pitcher doesn’t much care about evidence.
Does PAS or euthanasia devalue life or death? Not a bit of it. Pitcher himself indicates that death has to be seen as a part of life - and, this being the case, a good death would seem to be a component of a good life. If someone finds the prospect of pain or helplessness inimical to a good life, then I don’t think they’ve made a mistake. Of course, if a person wants to relinquish an easy exit for whatever reason, then that’s up to them. Still - if such an attitude is admirable, it’s still not one that merits being forced on those who don’t share it. That would be monstrous. It would undermine the dignity in dying that - notionally - we’d be seeking to preserve. (Because death is sooooooo dignified, isn’t it?)
Finally, is the social fabric threatened? Well, I suppose that the recent Dutch civil war, famine in Brussels, the absence of any kind of education in Oregon, and so on all lend supp…
WAIT A MINUTE! Holland, Belgium and Oregon all seem still to be perfectly decent places to live.
Pitcher nil, Thought 5. Away win.
I still do not understand why you believe that “a healthy person who wanted to die for some reason [should] be able to seek assistance“. I assume you mean “healthy” in both body and mind. If so, I am at a loss in what form the “assistance” would take. The NHS could publish a guide on how to kill yourself without wasting anybodies time and making a mess, but I think that most reasonable people could workout that this is not possible - there is no and never will be an easy and clean way of killing yourself (it has nothing to do with the law). If you mean that the NHS (or some other organisation) should become actively involved in the process of killing healthy people because they think they have a ‘right’ to be killed, you appear to have forgotten that this might cause NHS staff some problems. If they did not have some nagging doubts about killing healthy people I would be very worried about their state of mind.
Of course you might present a very convincing argument in the paper you gave a link to - ’Five words for assisted dying’. But as with almost all bioethics it is not worth the money to find out. When we speak of an ’information age’ most people think that information is getting cheaper and more accessible. Unfortunately academia is not of this age. Bioethics is by no means alone, the greater mass of published information from academics being extremely costly to access. As this information is mostly only available in a digital format, it is no long possible for the likes of me to read papers in university libraries. I have alumni reading passes to Cambridge, Exeter, Manchester and London university libraries, but this only gives me access to information in hardcopy (mostly pre-2000 journals).
Do I want to spend nearly £30 to read your paper? Sorry but no. Of course those working in the field of computer ethics, security engineering, etc., usually publish their work free on their extensive and well maintained websites (shameless plug for my gang). Bioethics needs to realise this is the 21st century and that there is no need to publish in journals that charge £30 to download a few MBs of information. The journals might claim there is a cost in getting it all peer reviewed, but that is quite low and is in most cases unnecessary. Even within the natural sciences it is quite evident that peer reviewing is pretty much a waste of time and often distorts scientific discourse. Chung Myung-hee was one of many who have managed to pass peer view. In subjects like bioethics and philosophy it is a joke.
Sorry another rant, but there really is no point in continuing bioethics if the ‘texts’ are going to be held in ‘chained libraries‘. I realise that you are in the system and have to go along with it, but that is how we ended up paying for nonexistent mortgages for MPs.
Keith Tayler
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
My apology to Prof. Chung Myung-hee, I meant Prof. Hwang.
Keith Tayler
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Hi -
I agree wholeheartedly with your point about open access journals. Email me and I’ll send you a copy of the paper - or send me your address for a paper copy. I’ve got tons of them.
As for your point about self-killing: I don’t see how weltschmerz would be a powerful motive to end your life - but that’s just my sunny disposition. I can’t account for the possible quirks of other people. And I do think that IF someone wants to die reliably, “safely” - you know what I mean - and with the least fuss, and IF someone else can provide that service, then it should be permissible. Where the NHS fits in with this is anyone’s guess, naturally. And maybe noone would want to be a thanatologist. That being the case - if there’s noone to provide you with the service - then that’s too bad. They can’t be forced. Still, that doesn’t indicate impermissibility.
Iain Brassington
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
As I said - it is not a matter of law. I am still concerned about what this sucide service would do to those that work in it.
Looks like we still disagree on this topic.
As for the open access issue - look at Prof Ross Anderson’s website at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/
It is an example of what can be done. If I want to find something about biobanks or medical record privacy I would look at Ross’s site before approaching any bioethics site. Obviously I am bias - but….
Keith Tayler
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:35 pm