Look how tough the bill is: those within six months of dying can ask for help (only in writing) to speed their ending, from two doctors seven days apart. After another wait, a panel of a psychiatrist, social worker and senior lawyer must agree, and the patient must be able to take the drug themselves with a doctor present. Many safeguards were added, and clinicians are free not to participate. Evidence from the many countries with similar laws shows that relatively few people use it, but most approaching death are comforted to know if the agony becomes unbearable, they can choose to end it.
Abortion was supposed to be tought, two doctors and all that. Didn’t quite work out that way, did it? Nor is ity in Canada. 4% of all deaths is not, in fact, “rare”.
So, you know, bugger off.
can ask for help (only in writing)
So a form letter sent via email to a central hub that forwards it to two doctors is some sort of deterrent? Same for the trick cyclist who will sign off whatever they are sent.
I’m not agin people being able to end their own life if they choose, but this current bill is dreadful. Trust Polly to defend it.
Just as the ‘Daily Mail’ has an article on one of those cases they tell us won’t happen…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15489605/canadian-woman-euthanized-ontario-maid.html
Great timing Polly!
“Mrs B’s palliative care doctor applied for in-patient hospice care due to her husband’s burnout, but it was quickly denied.”
And they say it’s not about saving money for the government?
The Daily Mail? [holding nose] No wonder Polly is unaware.
So if the agony becomes unbearable, who cares, just shut up and die quietly.
Or absolutely insist on adequate pain relief?
What are the odds that it’ll take so long to get the permission signed off the patient will already be six feet under…….
Kill the unborn, kill the old codgers but execute murderers and rapists – a step too far.
Imagine waving pictures of your dead relatives, demanding that you should have been allowed to murder them
Keith must be so proud in the hereafter.
A psychiatrist, a social worker, and a senior lawyer walked into a bar.
Shoulda looked where they were going. I mean, must we really trust a loonie, an inadequate, and a shyster to protect us?
The Tories plotting against the bill are a gleeful Lords reunion of the old Brexit gang – Michael Gove, David Frost, Mark Harper and Thérèse Coffey – reprising the same dirty tricks with the same cunning.
Supporting British democracy and being opposed to the National Death Service are “dirty tricks”
Even if a supporter of assisted dying comes top, any MP may blanch at what this has done to Kim Leadbeater. For more than a year, her life has been consumed by the longest scrutiny committees, amid vitriolic hate from opponents, for authoring and promoting this most minimalist of bills
Poor Kim Leadbeater, she had a simple dream. A dream that your Nan will be legally murdered by incompetent Third World NHS doctors. Why are people so hateful?
About 650 suicides of those who are dying are recorded every year; there may be more of these lonely, unassisted deaths.
Broke: suicide
Woke: murder
Leadbeater brought the obloquy on herself by championing the controversial bill….Actions have consequences, Kimmy.
Even if a supporter of assisted dying comes top, any MP may blanch at what this has done to Kim Leadbeater.
Maybe if she’s so worn down by it all, she could take advantage of her own bill; lead by example and all that…
My 93-year-old aunt is now in palliative care after what she thought in the summer was sciatica turned out to be aggressive bone cancer. She’s had at least 8 mRNA jabs, but we won’t go into that. There’s been some struggle to get the pain under control; she doesn’t react particularly well to codeine. The morphine syringe driver isn’t far off.
Fortunately we’ve managed to get her out of hospital and back home, where she’s much happier and more comfortable, well cared for by her daughter and care team. She’s decided that she wants to try to hang on until the summer. And there’s no reason why she shouldn’t.
Tell me in what way Leadbeater’s bill would make her life better? Only better pain control with fewer side effects would do that.
You have a touching faith in government healthcare and its ability to manage severe pain. Wottabout the less fortunate who cannot afford care teams etc. and spend their last months in agony that I bet you cannot imagine.
They could kill themselves, rather than expecting someone to do it for them. But, I hear you say, some people will be unable to do so – to which I would reply that hard cases make bad law.
My father, who lived in Sweden for 10 years, always maintained that British doctors were reluctant to prescribe adequate pain relief. 40 years ago, this was confirmed for me. I had been in a bad road accident – crush fractures of the lumbar vertebrae, other breakages and much internal soft tissue damage. I was in agony, the morphine wasn’t working. I begged for pain relief. Initially, the doctor refused to give me medical heroin “in case you become addicted”…FFS!
hang on until the summer
Bless her, she thinks Great Britain can win the World Cup and wants to be alive to see it. And I hope she does.
Srsly, there is some evidence that people carry on if they have something to believe in or look forward to. The dates of death of Washington and Adams spring to mind. They were old men but wanted to make it to the 50th birthday of the Declaration.
Twenty some years ago, Gamecock took an insurance training class (long story).
The instructor said, “People with annuities live longer. The industry has determined it is due to pure cussedness.”
If the agony becomes unbearable I shall just stop eating and drinking – that will be quicker than sending a note to two doctors a week apart.
I was going to unalive myself through autokabalesis like Van Halen, but that’s a bad idea. If I get horrible cancer or something, I will go to the zoo for one final visit.
COME ON THEN, SIMBA
Which one’s you in that picture?
I am a lion
Not a bad way of looking at it.
I’ll do a Captain Oates.
…if you can still walk.
I’ve got arms, haven’t I?
.
Quite so.
Gamecock had a coworker who offed herself. She put on her jammies, got her teddy bear, and went out to her garage and started her car. Door closed. Boss found her the next day.
Wut? The doctor does what? Make sure the drug works? And what does she do if it doesn’t?
The patient can take a bottle of Tylenol before leaving home.
Ask a doctor how long you have to live, and they’ll say, “We don’t know.”
Ask a doctor how long before you die, “Less than six months.” Odd they know that but not the other.
Anyone should be able to apply as everyone is going to die. ‘Six months’ is purely arbitrary. Why not 7 months?
John Bernard Books: “Laudanum! Doc Hostetler’s remedy.’
Bond Rogers: “Laudanum? That’s habit-forming, isn’t it?”
llater,
llamas