GrumbleSmiles

This is a speech no-one made in the debate on assisted dying on Friday 18^th July 2014 in the House of Lords.  (See earlier posts on this subject by clicking on “ASSISTED SUICIDE” in the TAG CLOUD).

“I welcome this Bill with open arms.  It has the potential to lift a great burden on society and pave the way for further advances in NHS no-care of the elderly.

Immediately after the Bill is first approved, by being economical with the facts and focussing on the emotional and genuine cases of distress in terminal illness, we can take the moral high ground.

Initially only a few high profile cases, which are unquestionably sincere, will avail themselves of the new law.   This will affirm the righteousness of the argument and make it easier in the years ahead to widen the scope of the Bill and enable this innovative new social policy to be available to even more older people.    If we believe in the pain and suffering of the terminally ill, why not then go on to accept that Alzheimer’s could be redefined as a terminal illness.   This would eradicate the prolonged suffering of all those in the lost world of dementia.   Hundreds and thousands of dementia sufferers could be helped to an easier death.   Consent could easily be given by their long suffering relatives.

Equally, many of the chronically sick older people who block so many beds in NHS hospitals, overwhelm GP surgeries, drain Social Services of all their resources for preventative services could all be assisted to die sooner.

Instead of the current hugely expensive Welfare State, we could, at least for the elderly, make a new policy of National Assistance  —— a sort of National Neglect State.

At the simple stroke of an amending legislator’s pen in the years ahead as the growing burden of the elderly becomes unbearable to society as a whole – we at last may have  a Final Solution.  The bottom of the slippery slope of assisted dying has a lot to recommend it:-

• GP’s surgeries will have a lot more free time – rapid appointments for all who are left;
• Social Services won’t have to rush around giving no-care to people in the community, and then being criticised for all their hard work;
• Hospitals will have beds to spare and the looming £30 billion extra needed to care for the growing elderly population, will no longer be required.
• Relatives will be released from the unwanted duty of looking after mum and dad in their dotage;

And perhaps best of all:-

• Billions of pounds will be released to the younger generation in legacies.  
• Millions of houses released onto the market, will solve the current housing shortage.

What’s not to like in this new forward thinking 21^st century society ????????”

I commend this speech to the House!

An unspoken speech by The Grim Reaper

(This is a continuing post on the recent theme of the assisted dying bill, click on ASSISTED SUICIDE in the TAG CLOUD for other posts on this subject).

Professor Theo Boer who originally was an advocate of assisted dying has now changed his view after seeing the policy develop after legislation was introduced in the Netherlands in 1967.  What started as a compassionate approach to terminal illness with the active consent of patients and doctors, has now become “normal practice” for many elderly and chronically ill people.

What began as a response to a few exceptional cases has increased by 15% every year since 2008 and may well reach 6,000 deaths this year.  Nearly 1 in 7 deaths are at the hands of doctors in the Netherlands.

A new medical term has now emerged – “terminal sedation” where patients are sedated and then dehydrated and starved to death.  This has been advocated in the UK in the “Liverpool Pathway” – a term which has now been withdrawn.  This approach accounts for 12% of all deaths in the Netherlands, but many people who die this way are not included in the assisted dying figures.

In Belgium the figures are even higher where 1 in 5 of all deaths are ‘helped’ by doctors.

The slippery slope looks to be getting slipperier and slipperier.

This could be the easy answer to the NHS being overwhelmed by elderly patients.  It would be a lot cheaper than prolonging “unwanted” lives.  The pensions industry would have a strategic solution to unpredicted longer lives.  Who knows, annuities might even increase again if life expectancy starts to fall.

The economic argument for shortening older people’s lives is getting stronger all the time, though nobody dare advance that case in speeches in the House of Lords debates on assisted dying.     Meanwhile care and compassion for the frail and vulnerable is talked about frequently in a heart on your sleeve way ——- but seldom acted upon.

After several years of careful parliamentary steering, Lord Falconer has brought forward his bill on assisted dying to the debate stage in the House of Lords.  I have commented on the path this life ending project has taken —– like the slow march behind the funeral hearse.

(See other posts by clicking on “ASSISTED SUICIDE” in the TAG CLOUD).

Lord Falconer, with all the sure footed confidence of a former Lord Chancellor, knows that only single-minded, blinkered certainty will see the task through.

There is a strong sense of self-righteousness and little humility in the campaign.  No room for doubt, no listening to dissention.  The slippery slope argument advanced by some opponents of the bill, including myself, has been cast aside with disdain.

But is he right, or will this man with a mission end up with a monument for himself and an early headstone for thousands of elderly people – ????????????????