ern's: End the ban on assisted suicide, report will urge the government

Sunday, January 1, 2012

End the ban on assisted suicide, report will urge the government

Commission will say helping terminally ill people to commit suicide should be made legal under strict new safeguards

Helping terminally ill people to commit suicide should be made legal under strict new safeguards, a major independent report is expected to recommend this week.

The eagerly awaited advice from the Commission on Assisted Dying, chaired by Lord Falconer, a former lord chancellor, is likely to criticise the current legal framework and suggest that, in some cases, those who encourage or assist another to die should no longer be threatened with prosecution.

The report is expected to recommend that assisted dying be legalised only for a very limited category of terminally ill patients and under procedures that are rigorously monitored. It is likely to suggest tight controls on how and when lethal medicines are prescribed for use in assisted suicide. Procedures to ensure that those involved are made fully aware of all the palliative and social care available to them are also likely to be spelt out.

The report is certain to reignite the fierce debate between advocates and opponents of euthanasia.

Writing in today's Observer, Baroness Warnock, a leading expert in medical ethics, backs a change to the law, which currently leaves someone who assists in the suicide of a friend or loved one liable to up to 14 years in prison.

Warnock says that if parliament does not change the law ? if "aiding or abetting suicide remains a form of murder" ? then "the only remedy is to follow the Law Society's long-standing advice and change the law of murder".

Opponents of assisted dying say that the commission, which has members from medicine, law, academia, the police and politics, is packed with euthanasia supporters. But Warnock, who is not on the commission, says it has interviewed expert witnesses "thoroughly and conscientiously".

The commission is funded by the author Sir Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer's disease, and by Bernard Lewis, founder of the River Island fashion chain, who backs reform.

Among the most emotional evidence was that given by police officers investigating the death of 23-year-old Dan James, who had played rugby for England as a teenager. James committed suicide in a Swiss clinic after having become paralysed from the chest down in a training accident. After his death his parents contacted police to admit that they had helped him achieve his wish to end "a second-class existence" by taking him abroad ? despite praying to the last, and urging him to change his mind. The police had to investigate and the Jameses underwent three hour-long interviews each by officers days after their son's funeral. The case against them was eventually dropped.

Although the current law is clear that assisting someone to die is illegal, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has produced guidelines to clarify when an individual might not face prosecution. These suggest that relatives acting on compassionate grounds are unlikely to go to jail, but those acting in a professional capacity, such as doctors or nurses, are much more likely to face charges.

Those backing a change in the law accept they are unlikely to convince the current government to push their recommendations through parliament. But they hope the report will help make the case for change. David Cameron made clear in 2006 that he opposed moves to change the law in parliament to legalise assisted dying.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "The government believes that any change to the law in this emotive and contentious area is an issue of individual conscience and a matter for parliament to decide, rather than government policy."

Warnock says today that the status quo is not satisfactory. "For one thing, it [the law] classes together the actions of some one who broadcasts encouragement to suicide to the world at large with one who agonisingly decides that, out of compassion, when asked to do so, he must help a person he loves to escape from suffering. For another thing, the only people who may not be exempt from prosecution are professionals, doctors or nurses, who are the only people with the knowledge to be sure of success. Nothing could be more terrible than a botched suicide, a terminally ill person determined to die brought back to yet more horrible life."

The Suicide Act 1961 made it an offence to encourage or assist the suicide or attempted suicide of another person.

Toby Helm