I really don’t know what to think about this to be honest as I can see both points of view and the cynic in me always worries it could be used for unscrupulous things like getting rid of folk for their wealth etc. We shall see and no doubt it will bring relief to those who suffer such a horrible end with no hope
It’s not there yet tho’, they have just:
adopté la proposition de loi
Still need the actual law to be set up
My naturally optimistic nature shields me from this fear. I, too, understand both points of view; for my part, I am in favour of this law, because it is cruel to force anyone to endure excruciating suffering indefinitely.
I know it’s an oft cited fear but I don’t know big a reality it would be. Moot point I know, as there does remain the possibility that someone will want to bump off grannie for her Wedgwood collection. (Forgive my humour, it’s intentionally flippant whilst not intending to make light) So however slim the possibility, it does need to be guarded against in law. I feel there are levels of protection, sign-off if you like, that could be encoded into the law to make it so.
I do think more of the other scenario; someone who actively wants to go being denied that. I would honestly like to see kind of end-of-life clinics. A one-stop-shop that handles all of the legal, practical and logistical steps required to tidily wrap up someones life. Not entitely administrative either, it would also include counselling, advice, support, etc. I think doing something like this would move the subject of ending one’s life out of the almost shame environment it exsists in, to a thing considered an every day normality.
À palliative care doctor told me he’d only seen such suffering twice in his career. Palliative medicine has become so highly-developed that excessive suffering is extremely rare. It’s certainly not (in my view, given the statistics) a valid reason to introduce assisted dying, and advances mean that what a patient might have suffered years ago is no longer a risk.
Much less rare is the Canadian experience, where old people with relatively minor problems are encouraged to choose “MAID”. It’s now being extended to people with mental illnesses, and you can imagine how a nation that struggles to cope with biological sex in the face of self-identification as any of a variety of genders is handling that.
I disagree. Doctors are generally very poor in recognising suffering, let alone pain. About 2 months ago the father of a very good friend of mine died in hospital. The last few days she was totally distraught as he was obviously in pain , not screaming but constant groaning which for him would be major. She and her mother continually asked for more pain relief and were told that that was contra-indicated because of his heart problems so they wouldn’t prescribe more because of the risk! Unbelievable. His last 5 days were therefore extremely unpleasant for him and for the rest of the family.
I would have gone ballistic, but they were so distraught that couldn’t find the energy to fight. They have however started a formal complaint against the hospital.
(In my mother’s case the palliative care was excellent, and she had a morphine driver, but then the 3 of us were there 24/7 to check. )
This is not correct. Quite often, when cancer gets into the bones, even the strongest of painkilling treatments don’t even touch the sides. As you know, this is an illness in which I have a particular interest and it’s not uncommon for prostate cancer patients to be begging for release towards the end.
And, if it was so rare then it’s not a big issue as the right to die would also be rarely used.
It is a question where statistics are important.
We agree that with opioids, nerve blocks, that sort of thing, physical pain cannot always be managed.
The discussion is about how often that is the case and that feeds into whether the risks of assisted dying (the slippery slope which is seen in every juurisdiction, given enough time, Canada being one example).
It’s good news. The only study I’m aware of (I haven’t done much research) is the Hedman et al. (2024) one (Pain prevalence and pain relief in end-of-life care – a national registry study | BMC Palliative Care | Springer Nature Link), which found that of 232,848 registered patients who experienced pain during their last week of life, only 0.2% reported that their pain was “not at all relieved”.
You’d have hoped so, wouldn’t you? Yet experience shows that is not the case.
So to make these statistics real that means that over 400,000 people died after at least a week of unrelievable pain. That’s 400,000 too many in my book, so not sure how you can say this is good news?
To me this is where statistics are largely irrelevant. One can do as many risk assessments as you like, backup up by stats, but the fundamental to me is that severe pain is non-negotiable and no one should ever be made to suffer this unnecessarily. So one person is too many in 21st century.
An interesting paper but I suspect that the 23.7% of cancer patients where pain was “partly relieved” covers a fairly large spectrum of suffering and I’m not sure a doctor is best qualified to opine on “excessive suffering” unless they’re the one with the pain. The doctor is interested, the patient is involved.
No one can feel what the patient feels, nor put themselves in their shoes. Only the patient knows what they are going through.
Well, we all know we’ve had enough of experts!
I can see that those of you who are for “assisted dying” have already made up your minds, and either misunderstand the study (I imagine you didn’t read it, @JaneJones , otherwise you wouldn’t have written what you did; @Juliet , the whole point of the study was that it did ask the patients! ) or prefer to substitute your opinion for the only study (AFAIK) which has been done.
It’s pointless to have a discussion in those circumstances though that won’t prevent me pointing out the dangers of “assisted dying”, which none of you seems to be concerned about.
I am concerned about potential dangers, but believe they can be mitigated enough to make it worth the risk. (Oh, and I read the abstract)
Sorry, Jane and John, my response was grumpier than intended. As you know, I don’t normally rely on what I believe to support arguments (my theory is that science and my faith should corroborate each other) but I think I allowed it to blind me to how people might feel about the future.
I just can’t see how that can be achieved, and the way it works in Australia and Canada seems to confirm that. Even if the UK, in the progress of the Leadbeater Bill, we saw promised safeguards repeatedly watered down and then presented as improvements.
Well said Jane.
My concern was that you appeared to cherry pick one number of 0.2% as being justification for discounting pain being an issue and completely ignoring the quarter of pain patients where palliative care had some level of effect, though undefined . That could cover a whole range of effects from hardly any improvement to minimal pain.
My doctor comment was about the one who had only seen 2cases of excessive suffering, rather than the data.
By the way, can’t you see the irony in suggesting that we’ve made up our minds?
So what 
?
Life is full of risks, but also of decisions. However many there may be (and, in my view, it is not a question of number), the patients concerned will be grateful to the legislator and that’s the most important.
I think there are also other aspects to the end of life scenario that I watched for both my brother (cancer) and my father (polyarteritis nodosa).
We may have found the treatments that prolong life, but if that prolongation brings complete loss of dignity and agony of spirit as one watches oneself die, then there is nothing to be grateful for.
Why are we afraid of dying? Of watching others die? There are certain conditions that are totally irreversible and there is no dignity in having those final, weeks, months, inched through, to the final inevitability. It is no accident that the name of the organisation in Switzerland is “Dignitas”.
I think of my father, totally regressed to babyhood, lying on his bed in a mixed ward in St Thomas’s, kicking his legs in the air, trying to get his pyjama bottoms off. The nursing staff had to put them on backwards so that he couldn’t, in order not to offend the elderly ladies on his ward. In some ways, funny. But this was my proud, dignified, gentle father. In the end, we persuaded St Thomas’s to let him come home, and he died in his own bed with Mozart playing and my reading him poetry.
My brother, tall, rake thin, good looking - the muscles on one side of his body wasting due to the radiology and puffed up by the steroids pumped into him in a vain attempt to stop the tumour in his brain growing to the point that he was so fat and heavy, he could not lift himself up in bed enough for the nurses to get a bedpan underneath his buttocks. So he had to crap on a plastic sheet. He cried.
I do genuinely see that as part of the issue. Equally, I do think assisted dying, or whatever one chooses to call it, will go some way to make it seem less of an issue. There seems a near obsession, at some level, to keep us alive, whatever the cost.
Your experiences are horrid SuePJ. I wouldn’t want for anyone to go through them, either as sufferer or proche. It’s primarily that reason that makes me so staunch in my desire to see assisted dying legalised.