Date: Monday 11th November 2024
Release time: Embargoed until 22.00 Monday 11th November 2024
Care Not Killing responds to the publication of Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing, described the Bill as a missed opportunity. He commented:
"This bill is being rushed with indecent haste and ignores the deep-seated problems in the UK's broken and patchy palliative care system and the crisis in social care as highlighted by thousands of medics who signed the open letter to the Prime Minister, published this morning. It also ignores data from around the world that shows changing the law would put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.
"Indeed, the problems in end-of-life care, chronicled in great detail in numerous academic and official reports have been explicitly recognised by our new Health Secretary and many other parliamentarians, who want to fix the system, not change the law. We agree with them."
Dr Macdonald continued:
"For those MPs who have not decided how they will vote; we would urge them to look at what is happening in the small number of places that have legalised either assisted suicide or euthanasia. In particular the draft Bill seems to model itself on the US State of Oregon, which has an assisted suicide system. Here a majority of those ending their lives consistently cite fear of being a burden on their families, friends and or finances as a reason. While legalising Physician Assisted Suicide also seems to normalise suicide in the general populations. Academics who looked at this worrying trend concluded that legalising assisted suicide was associated with an increase of 6.3 per cent in the numbers of suicides, once all other factors had been controlled. At the same time the range of conditions in Oregon have expanded to include, depression, anorexia, musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases, diabetes, gastrointestinal diseases and liver disease, which are not generally considered terminal.
"Indeed, the expansion of those deemed eligible to be killed by the state and the erosion of so-called safeguards can be seen in other places. In Canada, a law for terminally ill adults now includes disabled people and those with mental health problems, while in 2022 1,700 people who were euthanised cited loneliness as a reason, most of them elderly and vulnerable. Shockingly a recent report from Ontario showed the poor were disproportionately more likely to be euthanised. And this is before we get to Belgium and the Netherlands which routinely euthanises children and babies. This is why the safest law is the one we currently have and why we urge MPs to reject this Bill and focus on extending palliative care to the one in four Brits who desperately need it but can't access it."
ENDS
Editors Notes
Care Not Killing is a UK-based alliance bringing together human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups, and thousands of concerned individuals.
We have three key aims:
- to promote more and better palliative care;
- to ensure that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed;
- to inform public opinion further against any weakening of the law.
*As this story is dealing with suicide, please could we ask that you include details about organisations that offer help and support to vulnerable people who might be feeling suicidal such as the Samaritans, CALM or similar - Thank you.*
