“He had, in the nicest possible way, been written off. He had an absolute horror of suffocation, of gradually being denied air and turning blue, similar to Diane Pretty.”
The doctor’s actions saved him from that. If it had been necessary, would she personally have helped him into the night? She struggles to answer: “Killing someone is very difficult. If I had been able to get hold of a tremendously large number of sleeping pills, I think I would have been prepared to put them in his reach. And if he’d had them I think he would have used them.”
But knowing “when is the right day” is devilishly difficult: “We watched a film together about someone having this dilemma.” Her eyes cloud over but just as she seems about to cry, she smiles roundly: “Geoffrey was very keen on golf, and before he died he was able to see the Ryder Cup and this marvellous cliffhanger, ending in wonderful victory.”
Such are the delicate balances between lives worth living, and lives worse than death. “There are still things to enjoy but it’s the dread of the future that is so awful.”
After her husband’s death in 1995, Warnock moved from the large house in the village where she and Geoffrey had raised five children, and admits for a while she “went a bit dotty”.
But since then she had done a lot of thinking and Warnock now goes further than supporting the right to suicide, as outlined in the Mental Capacity Bill; she suggests to me there might even be a duty to suicide: “I know I am not really allowed to say it but one of the things that would motivate me is I couldn’t bear hanging on and being such a burden on people. When I say that, people throw up their hands in horror, ‘This is just (the attitude) we dread if (euthanasia) becomes permissible by law; people will feel they have to do it for the sake of their family.’
“But I don’t see what’s so bad about that. In other contexts sacrificing oneself for one’s family would be considered good. I don’t see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance.”
So we should be more like elephants? “Exactly, they creep off and get out of the way.” And we should show similar bravery? “Absolutely. It used to be much easier to crawl into one’s corner and die than it is now because people are always dragging you off to be rescued.” Cue: loud laughter.
She goes even further, suggesting the frail as well as the terminally ill should shuffle off early: “If I went into a nursing home it would be a terrible waste of money that my family could use far better, or even that society could use better with inheritance tax.”
This is extreme stuff. Warnock is so full of vitality, in the midst of organising a party for local artists, that she would need to be really far gone before I could see her taking her own advice. And thank God. Surely the elderly should spend what is, after all, their money on staying alive if they want to; and shouldn’t we care for them as they cared for us for as long as they are around? Not so. Warnock points out that the sick at the beginning and end of life’s cycle often rely on a limited public purse, and if we keep a baby alive on a life-support machine we deny someone else treatment:
“Maybe it has to come down to saying, ‘Okay, they can stay alive but the family will have to pay for it.’ Otherwise it will be an awful drain on public resources.” But wouldn’t this offend against doctors’ desire to keep us alive? “I don’t see why the rest of us should be sacrificed to the scruples of the medical profession. Some say, ‘But we wouldn’t like to do it.’ Of course they wouldn’t like to do it, but maybe they should,” she intones with the cut-glass determination that sent young men off to do their duty in the trenches.
Warnock suggests saving life for its own sake has become a fetish. She tells me of a gruesome story she heard from New York where a poor mother gave birth prematurely. “Nurses were desperate to break a record (and save the baby). The over-effort was all sentimentality, really. The mother didn’t want the baby, she knew she couldn’t cope, and within days of going home it was found dead, eaten by rats.”
For adults, life can also be hardly worth living but normally they can be asked their wishes: “If people now think they should have a say in the start of life — to keep a baby alive — surely they should also have a say in its ending?”
But critics point to research showing that more than half failed suicides are glad they survived. “There is no answer to that point,” Warnock concedes. “Except that (an assisted suicide) must be allowed time to change her mind.”
A problem with allowing assisted suicide is it contradicts our deeply held view that all lives are equally valuable. “I am not ashamed to say some lives are more worth living than others,” she declares. But a few years back this attitude led doctors not to treat a tramp because his quality of life was too low. “Yes, if someone else decides your life is not worth living, that is very dangerous, but the current bill would allow people to draw up living wills asking not to be revived, so it would be their own decision.”
We meet just after publication of the Shipman report. Surely this proved that it is shockingly difficult to determine whether a doctor has been merciful or murdering? “There is a real danger from rogue doctors but this bill addresses that by requiring two doctors (for an assisted suicide). It is unlikely both would want to bump her off.” As for “Mrs Z”, who was allowed to fly to Switzerland to kill herself, Warnock thinks it was right to let her go but “ there is an absurdity in saying ‘she can kill herself but not in my backyard’. Making her go abroad when she is very ill only piles on the agony.”
As one of our most eminent philosophers she has spent a lifetime pondering morality. She believes we pick it up as children from tiny incidents; learning that pulling hair is nasty leads us to conclude harming others is wrong. Her regret is that too many teachers avoid hard moral lessons: “They find it easier to tell children about the rainforest than about right and wrong. Yet little children aren’t very tempted to cut down rainforests.”
Rational argument, she believes, is our salvation. This is why she is outraged by Tony Blair hiding behind his faith. “The worst thing Tony Blair ever said was that he would be judged before his God; it was horrible.” Parliament, she says, should be his judge in the here and now, not God some time in the future.
With that bracing statement, she tells me she’s “got to clean the house before the party”. It is 9pm but she shows no sign of flagging. Let’s hope that for the philosopher queen the euthanasia dilemma remains purely theoretical for a long time yet.
