It is impossible to predict if a person has 6 months to a year to live.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The UK will soon debate an a bill to legalize assisted suicide. Kim Leadbeater (MP) will soon introduce a bill to legalize assisted suicide. The language of the bill has not been released but it is anticipated that the bill will permit a doctor to prescribe lethal poison to a person with six months or a year to live.

An article by Janet Eastham that was published in the Telegraph interviews end-of-life care medical professionals. Eastham reports:

The Telegraph revealed that Ms Leadbeater’s legislation is expected to specify the timeframe within which someone is reasonably expected to die, with prognoses of between six and 12 months being considered.

Eastham then reports:

Prof Katherine Sleeman, Laing Galazka chairman at King’s College London, told The Telegraph: “It is not possible to accurately determine someone’s prognosis as a number of months, say six months or 12 months.

“As a doctor, patients do ask me, ‘How long have I got left?’ and I would never say, ‘Six months or fewer.’ I might say, ‘Your prognosis is probably measured in months, or “long months”.’ That’s as precise as I would be.

“When someone has only a few days, or certainly only a few hours left to live, it can be easier to understand with a higher degree of certainty that they’re likely to die within that time-frame. But when we’re getting into the territory of months, it is very, very difficult.”

Prof Sleeman noted the “arbitrary” nature of a six or 12-month prognosis, something illustrated by the DWP’s data, which “shows that people who were estimated to live for only 12 months ended up living for more than three years”.

Medical professionals told Eastham that a 6 month or 12 month terminal prognosis is arbitrary. Why not four months or eight months. 

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a cross-bench peer and former professor of palliative medicine tells Eastham:

“Predicting life expectancy is impossible… I have known people who live well and actively for years after they were thought to have no more than a few weeks to live.”

Eastham interviews Prof Chris Parker, a senior oncologist, who said he had seen one such patient “only this morning” and said:

“Ten years ago, he was told that he had terminal cancer, and he’s now alive and well,”

Parker offered Eastham a warning:

“I have little doubt that some patients would choose assisted suicide if it was legal, because they were told they had less than six months to live, but in truth, if they had not had assisted suicide, would have lived for years and enjoyed a good quality of life, because I’ve seen patients like that.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition recognizes that a six or twelve month prognosis is included in assisted suicide bills to suggest that the law will be limited to people who are actually terminally ill but it is impossible to accurately predict a six month terminal prognosis.

Further to that, once legalized the six or twelve month terminal prognosis becomes discriminatory to people who are not dying but have a chronic condition. 

What begins as a "safeguard" is soon eliminated because it denies unequal access to a legal procedure.