The debate over assisted suicide will be reopened tomorrow when Sir Terry Pratchett uses the annual Dimbleby Lecture to call for a radical overhaul of the law.
The best-selling author, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, will say that the “time is really coming” for assisted death to be legalised.
He will also offer himself as a “test case” for an assisted suicide tribunal, a body that he believes should be set up to give people legal permission to end their life with medical help.
A poll for the BBC Panorama programme, which will also be screened tomorrow evening, has revealed strong support – 73 per cent – for friends and relatives to be spared prosecution if they help someone with a terminal illness to end their life.
However, support declines for cases in which the illness is not fatal, with 48 per cent backing the right of friends and family to help a suicide and 49 saying they should be prosecuted.
Last week Kay Gilderdale was cleared of attempting to murder her daughter Lynn, who was paralysed by ME.
Sir Terry said that if he knew he could end his life at a time of his choosing, without the fear of incriminating a friend or family member, he would enjoy the rest of his life far more.
“If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice,” he will say in the lecture.
“I certainly do not expect or assume that every GP or hospital practitioner would be prepared to assist death by arrangement, even in the face of overwhelming medical evidence. That is their choice. Choice is very important in this matter. But there will be some, probably older, probably wiser, who will understand.”
Summing up his feelings as he faces a difficult future he will say: “It’s that much heralded thing, the quality of life that is important. How you live your life, what you get out of it, what you put into it and what you leave behind after it. We should aim for a good and rich life well lived, and at the end of it, in the comfort of our own home, in the company of those who love us, have a death worth dying for.”
Campaigners such as Debbie Purdy are calling for clarity in the law. Her landmark appeal led to the Director of Public Prosecutions reviewing the current guidelines.
If Ms Purdy’s progressive MS becomes too much, she wants to be sure that her husband Omar will not be prosecuted if she chooses to die with his help at the Digitas clinic in Zurich.
Interviewed for Panaorama with Mrs Gilderdale, she criticised MPs for refusing to properly debate the issue, or consider legislation, prefering to leave it to the courts.
“I think the idea of saying, well a fudge in the law, lack of clarity, let’s not talk about it, let’s not get it any clearer – it’s a lack of respect for the democratic process,” she saids.
"This is the only law in the United Kingdom where carrying out an act is legal, but assisting in that act is illegal.”
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, who is opposed to change, said that she feared the DPP’s new guidelines would be the thin end of the wedge to legalised assisted suicide.
The DPP’s interim guidelines laid out 16 factors which would determine whether someone would be prosecuted.
“They’re not just guidelines, they’re the beginning of the process. Once you open the door a crack, you’re beginning to sanction or say to a culture, yes in some circumstances it is right to mercy kill disabled or terminally ill people,” she said.
From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7010209.ece
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