I WAS very alarmed to read Valerie Grove’s account of the “courageous” suicide of Hilde Hunt (“I loved life and I shall have no sorrow to die”, T2, December 2). It strongly suggested that suicide is a good “choice” for some people, and that euthanasia ought to be legalised to give vulnerable people this option.
I have spina bifida, hydrocephalus, osteoporosis and emphysema, and I use a wheelchair full time. I also have very severe spinal pain which is not always well controlled, even with morphine. When the pain is at its worst I cannot speak, move or think. It can go on for hours, and there is no prospect of relief. Indeed, it is likely to get worse.
Nineteen years ago, when doctors believed (wrongly, as it turned out) that I was terminally ill, I decided that I wanted to die. I simply could not see a way to carry on. I attempted suicide several times and was saved only because my friends found me in time and got me to the hospital, where I was treated against my will. I refused permission for the doctors to pump my stomach and resuscitate me, so they waited until I lost consciousness than treated me anyway.
If euthanasia had been legal then I would have requested it. Under the terms of the Assisted Dying Bill I would have qualified for it. Had it been granted, no one would ever have known that the future held something better for me, and that the doctors’ prognosis of my life expectancy was wrong.
What we actually need is not legalised killing, but help and support to live with dignity until we die naturally.
Alison Davis, Blandford Forum, Dorset
Inhumane
THE story of Hilde Hunt’s suicidal death is no argument for euthanasia. Euthanasia should not be legalised. It is the killing of another, and it is a mistake to refer to it as mercy killing.
Dying with dignity is dying naturally with full compassion and palliative care and whatever medical treatment is neccessary for comfort and freedom from pain. If a Bill were being introduced to Parliament that legalised killing animals through the withdrawal of food and fluid there would be a public outcry. That is what is being proposed for human beings in the Government’s Mental Capacity Bill.
Peter Sawyer, Barnet, Hertfordshire
Not when, but whom?
SHOULD we still say yes to life when it turns out to be a curse? I was deeply touched by the story of Hilde Hunt and the way that she decided to end her life. I have not seen much of the world yet, but I strongly believe that human beings should have the right to decide for themselves.
In some circumstances, people should be given the right to end their lives. It is easier to say that the killing of another man is wrong than to try to understand his pain. Hilde Hunt had done all the things that she wanted to do in her life. In the final stages of it she wanted to have the freedom to choose when to go, and not to be given that right increased her torture.
Euthanasia should be legalised in every part of the world. But we need to consider which groups of people should be given the right to commit suicide. Should it be people who are depressed, as well as those in the later stages of terminal illnesses? I do not think that we have reached the stage or developed the understanding to allow anyone to take his or her life on the ground of simple unhappiness.
Sandhir Ruttun, London N1
Misrepresented?
I READ the disability rights commissioner Jane Campell’s piece (“Right to die? I’m more concerned that everyone have the right to live”, Comment, December 2”) with sympathy, but also with curiosity. She wrote against the Assisted Dying Bill with strong personal feelings. I respect those, but the views of disabled people sought by the Disability Rights Commission last year show that 63 per cent of them disagree with her.
The commission said that disabled people want a right to life ahead of a right to die: is this an appropriate choice? Surely we should have both a right to life and a right to a good death. If the commission has opposed the Bill when disabled people do not, it seems that its role is only to represent them when it agrees with what they tell it, and to suppress their views when it does not. That does not seem fair. By sending Jane Campbell to give its evidence on the Bill, is not the commission misleading Parliament?
Harriet Pope, London SW19
An easy way out
SUICIDE is and always will be a selfish act; euthanasia is an equally selfish act on anyone’s part, however one dresses it up. While I am of no religious inclination, I will always believe that we have a purpose in life to the last minute. We have the means to ease suffering in this age more than any other, so why allow euthanasia now? What message to the young and desperate does it send?
Hilde Hunt’s sister, by taking her life, was an obvious influence on her decision. What influence on Hilde Hunt’s grandchildren will her own suicide be? At what age will they decide that they have had a good life and that it is time to go?
Pat Hodgson, Coventry
Still taboo
AS a GP with 30 years’ experience, I am astonished that the public and my profession still find euthanasia an almost a taboo subject. Ask anyone how they wish to die and the answer I have always received is “with dignity”. The press always ask the hospice movement for comment. This is self-defeating because hospices are organisations of a Christian origin; and as it is fairly sure that their patients will die soon, they are naturally against or equivocal about the concept. People who look after old and demented people in nursing homes are inclined to be in favour of voluntary euthanasia, as the old folk they care for are frequently in a position where dignity becomes a very difficult thing to maintain, however hard everybody tries.
This view is not just my own interpretation but supported by research. The caring professions will talk and discuss, but only in private and not in a professional role. However, when these discussions do occur it is rare to find anyone who is vehemently opposed.
So why do we not open it up, find some MPs who will espouse the cause and pass an Act of Parliament, rather than hiding behind a pretence of care which condemns many people to a very undignified end? It is not necessarily love we demonstrate at the end rather a form of cruelty created from our moral cowardice.
Ninian Hewitt, Edinburgh
Choose life
THE Voluntary Euthanasia Society’s living will has several optional clauses including: “I wish to be kept alive for as long as reasonably possible and consent to all appropriate medical treatment”. Requesting a living will from the society can clarify your wishes in more ways than you might expect, and would certainly have helped Jane Campbell to impress upon her doctors her wish to live.
Jim Quinn, Stroud, Gloucestershire
Restoring control
I FIRMLY believe that one has the right to end one’s life with dignity and at a time of one’s choosing. I watched my brother John die through assisted suicide in the Zurich flat owned by Dignitas in May 2003 and I hope that my own death will be as peaceful and dignified.
Hilde Hunt’s story is inspiring — she knew she wanted to die and was physically able to bring about her own death. For many people, like Diane Pretty, Reg Crew and my brother, this is not possible because their terminal illness robs them of the ability to organise and carry out such a complex act alone: they could ask for help but, under the 1961 Suicide Act, anyone convicted of “aiding and abetting” their suicide would face a jail sentence of up to 14 years.
At least, that was the case until this week’s court decision that the late “Mrs Z” had the right to have the help she needs to travel to Zurich for an assisted suicide. The Act now appears to be crumbling.
The police eventually decided not to prosecute Win Crew after her widely publicised return from Zurich after her husband Reg’s death, and Thames Valley Police wrote that “the public interest would not be served” by prosecuting me: police authorities appear to be acting as the feelings of their individual chief constables dictate. Is this any way to regulate such a sensitive matter?
It would be far better to have a law which permits assisted dying under certain carefully controlled conditions, such as Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying Bill, currently undergoing scrutiny by a House of Lords select committee. I await the outcome of their deliberations with interest, not least because, should I ever be in Hilde Hunt’s situation, I don’t want my only choices to be to travel to Zurich or to risk the varying application of the Suicide Act.
Lesley Close, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
A word of warning
OF COURSE euthanasia should be legalised. What gives these arrogant objectors the right to condemn someone else to unwanted interminable suffering? Anyone who does not believe in euthanasia is free to have as long and miserable a demise as they wish.
A. Flanders, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
