Anti-assisted dying letters ‘yet more scaremongering’

IN LIGHT of yet more scaremongering from Churches in Guernsey and a letter from Baroness Finlay, I would like to make the following points.

1. Of course the number of assisted deaths in Oregon has risen since the assisted dying legislation was introduced in 1997. Along with the growing population of the state (3.83m. in the 2010 census, reaching 4.2m. in 2018), increasing awareness and confidence in the process were bound to have that effect.

2. There were 143 assisted deaths in Oregon in 2017. This equates to 0.4% of all deaths in Oregon and it has taken 20 years of operating a successful assisted dying regime to reach even that tiny amount. If the same percentage is applied to the approximately 2,200 deaths in Guernsey, there would be nine assisted deaths per year.

3. Strangely, Churches in Guernsey claims that diseases such as liver disease and kidney failure are not ‘generally considered terminal’. According to whom? Chronic diseases that have been managed successfully for many years can enter a terminal phase.

According to Public Health England, 11,597 people die from liver disease every year. That’s rather a lot of people dying from a condition that is not ‘generally considered terminal’. In any case, there have been no concerns raised that anyone using the Oregon law was not given a terminal diagnosis of six months or less by a health care professional.

4. In my opinion, it is a great thing that patients in Oregon are not compelled to exhaust all treatment options before they access medical aid in dying. As in Guernsey and the UK, they have a right to refuse treatment, and forcing someone to undergo treatment against their will is considered assault.

5. Desire to have an assisted death does go away in some cases, hence why approximately one-third of eligible Oregonians who receive the prescription choose not to take the medication in the end.

For those who choose not to take it, I have no doubt that the prescription still provides emotional reassurance, enabling people to live life to the full in the time they have left and without the fear of a painful death.

6. There are a small number of people for whom palliative care does not relieve all pain and suffering. In UK hospices, approximately 1.4% of bereaved relatives report that their loved one received no effective relief of pain during the last three months of life, according to the National Bereavement Survey.

A further 12% report their loved one receiving only partial pain relief (Office for National Statistics, 2016). Indeed, Baroness Finlay herself has previously admitted that palliative care is not capable of relieving all suffering all of the time (Letters to The Times, 17 July 2009).

7. Furthermore, Baroness Finlay begins her letter by listing her impressive qualifications, but the evidence she provides about conversations with her patients is purely anecdotal.

Let’s not forget the 300 terminally ill people who deliberately end their own life in England and Wales every year, often without speaking to their health care professionals – or in some cases even their loved ones – for fear of implicating them in breaching the current law.

8. The most interesting thing about the attempts to widen the law in Oregon is that they have been opposed by both supporters and opponents of the current legislation. None of these attempts have gained any traction.

9. The independent research from Oregon (Ganzini 2008) which Baroness Finlay refers to uses an inclusive approach to diagnosing depression.

In other words, physical symptoms such as sleeplessness, weight loss, fatigue and lack of appetite are attributed to depression, even though these are also common symptoms of terminal illness. The same research cited by Baroness Finlay found that most people who requested an assisted death did not have a depressive disorder.

10. It is true that some people in Oregon have difficulty in accessing the assisted dying law, which rightly allows health care professionals to choose not to participate in any aspect of assisted dying. However, the Oregon Medical Association and the Oregon Nurses Association are neutral on the issue of physician-assisted death. Predictably, many Catholic hospitals refuse to participate in assisted dying, which is problematic for those living in rural areas of Oregon, where there may be no providers within 100 miles who are willing or able to dispense the necessary drugs.

DOUG WILSON,