‘I need a healthy hand to substitute for my useless hand, which would act according to my will’
‘I shouldn’t be here. My attempts to put an end to this have been frustrated’
‘When there is a day without problems, or sweating, or struggling with breathing, then the need to live comes back’

POLICE in Spain are investigating the apparent mercy killing of a quadriplegic who wrote an emotive internet blog pleading for help to “die with dignity”.

Over 18 months Jorge León Escudero, who lost the use of his arms and legs and was unable to breathe on his own, repeatedly asked for someone to help him to end his life. His body was found last week disconnected from the automatic respirator that kept him alive.

Señor León, 53, had an empty glass beside his bed that must have been placed to his mouth by someone else because he could only move his lips and head slightly.

A judge has opened an inquiry into the case. Under Spanish law, euthanasia is illegal and carries a maximum prison sentence of ten years.

It is thought that Señor León had been given a sedative before being disconnected from the respirator. There were no signs of violence.

His brother Carlos, who denied playing any part in the death, said he was grateful “to those who have helped” and “who have played a role so that he is released from suffering and had a decent death”.

The death has revived the debate over euthanasia in Spain, which was highlighted two years ago by the case of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic whose life and death became the subject of an Oscar-winning film, Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside).

Señor León worked as a nurse and had a passion for sculpture before an accident in the gym at his home in Valladolid, northwest Spain, left him paralysed six years ago.

Able to write using small movements of his head, Señor León began a weblog under the name “Lucas” in which he wrote about his life “without hope”. Asking for help to end his life, he said: “I need a hand to hold the glass, a healthy hand to substitute for my useless hand, which would act according to my will which is still free. I have everything prepared so they will remain incognito.”

Two days before he died, it appeared that an attempt had gone wrong. In another blog he said: “I shouldn’t be here. My attempts to put an end to this have been frustrated, just when the rest of the circumstances were ideal and I felt strong.”

In a letter to the Spanish daily El País last year, Señor León said that euthanasia had “stopped being just an ethical question contemplated by a minority but has become an urgent problem for a constantly increasing number of people”. In the months leading up to his death he contacted the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (DMD), a proeuthanasia group.

A spokesman for DMD said yesterday that Señor León had asked for someone to help to give him a sedative and disconnect his respirator. The group told him to contact his doctors as it was illegal to help someone to die in Spain. But he said: “How can we separate the right to live our lives freely and the right to die freely?” The left-wing party United Left said that it would present a motion to parliament calling for the law on euthanasia to be clarified. The Government is opposed to changing the law.

One in six doctors said they had helped people to die and 60 per cent said that they wanted the law changed, according to a poll by the Centre for Sociological Investigation. One said: “We all know what is really going on. Normally it only happens in cases which are very clear, but it would be better for both us and for our patients if it were regulated.”

RIGHT TO DIE

• The Netherlands was the first European country to legalise euthanasia in 2002
• Euthanasia was legalised in Belgium soon afterwards
• In Germany assisted suicide, where a person provides the means for someone to kill themselves, is legal
• In Switzerland, assisted suicide is legal in some circumstances
• In Britain, euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. A Bill on the subject will have its second reading in the House of Lords this week

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