Matthew's Journal

My view is influenced both by someone close to me having to refuse food and water in hospital in order to die, because the pain of terminal cancer was too severe, and by the fear of having to face something equivalent myself. Truly and honestly, I don't think I would want my worst enemy to go through that. It is something I don't think I will never forget, even as CFS/ME turns my episodic memory into mist.

I guess we all hope that when our time comes, death will be quick and painless, but few people get to die like my mother's grandmother. She is reported to have said that she was very tired and needed to go to bed early, then she walked up stairs and died suddenly of a heart attack.

I admit that I can't see a way to ensure that nobody ever could possibly be influenced to commit suicide because, for example, their relatives couldn't cope any more, or even wanted to inherit their money. Neither would I trust any government forever not to try to influence people as well. The human race doesn't have to means to do anything flawlessly. Some occasional evil could not be avoided if people were allowed access to a medicalised and painless means of suicide. There are safeguards in the system in Switzerland, and they try to eliminate that possibility. They may have succeeded so far, I don't now, but over a long enough time, there are inevitably going to be people who are being influenced, but nobody manages to spot this.

IF there is ever to be assisted suicide in the UK, we have to accept that the screening system is not infallible, while insisting that it is made as good as humanly possible. If the non-zero possibility of error cannot be accepted, then this is something that will not happen in the UK. However, medical treatments, intended to do reduce suffering, can cause harm in cases where human error contributes to what goes wrong. We do not believe medical error is in any sense acceptable, but I believe that the consensus is that medicine is worth the risk.

I am aware that some people have to endure things I can't face even trying to imagine in the final stages of their diseases, and I feel strongly that this is evil as well, and that it is inhumane to force people to go on to the bitter end if they are suffering severely. I would like to reduce this, even at the expense of an irreducible level of risk of very ill people being influenced to commit suicide when, on balance, they might not have made that choice.

Personally, I would also feel less afraid if I knew that there was a painless way out if I had a disease I couldn't deal with. The disease might not get that painful or otherwise impossible to cope with, but knowing that if it did there would be a way to escape would, I think, make it more endurable. As things are, you'd need to be still physically and mentally able to organise and carry out travel to Switzerland, and rich enough to do so. People lacking those resources don't get the choice of a less painful way out.