Covid-19 crisis demonstrates the need for euthanasia and assisted suicide is abstract rather than practical.

Euthanasia is not an essential service.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, the author of the book Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, and Theo Boer, a former member of a Netherlands Regional Euthanasia Review Committee (2005 - 14) collaborated to write the article: What Covid-19 has revealed about euthanasia, that was published by Spiked on April 14, 2020.

The authors begin the article by commenting on Covid-19 and healthcare:

There has not been, in living memory, more focus on healthcare, the vital role of doctors, the sacrifices made by nurses, and the wonderful efforts of everyone involved in the sector. Amid the coronavirus crisis, daily heroism, the scale of human loss, and the awful scenes in hospitals underline what is important – and what is not.

Theo Boer

They authors comment on euthanasia and Covid-19 in the Netherlands:

It will surprise some that in the Netherlands, the only dedicated clinic providing euthanasia and assisted suicide has closed. Euthanasia Expertise Centre (formerly known as End of Life Clinic) has suspended all euthanasia procedures. The clinic’s website says that existing procedures have been put on hold and new patients are no longer admitted. The centre – which in 2019 alone ended the lives of 898 patients suffering from cancers, psychiatric problems, early on-set dementia, and accumulated age-related complaints – is willing to make an exception only for those expected to die soon and those who may soon lose their capacity for decision-making.

They comment on euthanasia and Covid-19 in Belgium:

Similarly, in Belgium, Jacqueline Herremans, a member of the federal commission reviewing euthanasia, has noted that there are few resources and even fewer doctors available for euthanasia at the moment: ‘The most important thing right now is that we fight the coronavirus.’

They then comment on euthanasia and Covid-19 in Canada:

In Canada, authorities are also shutting down services. For a process that requires two different medical assessments and witnesses, the lives involved are not worth the risk. According to the Globe and Mail, two places in Ontario, where euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legal since 2016, have stopped providing medical assistance in dying (MAID) because of the coronavirus pandemic (one has since resumed for existing patients and those whose deaths are imminent).

In Ontario, only Hamilton and Ottawa are known to have decided that euthanasia is not an essential service. 

The authors point out that the Netherlands euthanasia clinic state that euthanasia is not a priority during the Covid-19 crisis. The statement from the euthanasia clinic follows an opposite statement last year where Steven Pleiter, the director of the clinic said:

‘If the situation is unbearable and there is no prospect of improvement, and euthanasia is an option, it would be almost unethical [of a doctor] not to help that person’

The authors say that palliative care institutions have not shut-down during the Covid-19 pandemic.

So what has the Covid-19 pandemic taught us about euthanasia? The authors state:

What the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated is that the need for euthanasia and assisted suicide is abstract rather than practical. In the Netherlands in the 1980s, assisted dying started out as the ultimate solution to impending horrible deaths. In present times, with a high level of care for the dying available in most countries with good healthcare, assisted dying is not about actual deaths, but about deaths that people fear. The reality is that most people die peaceful deaths. But many fear loss of control and find the prospect of others caring for them terrifying. 

Covid-19 brings the reality of death, the necessity of caring for others and being cared for by others, into our living rooms, making the preciousness of all lives and the tragedy of all deaths real. We see the humanity of the elderly and frail; no longer are they burdens to be dispatched from this world, but victims of horrifying disease that all are invested in fighting.

The authors conclude by stating:

"Perhaps, though, we can remember this time when we made huge sacrifices to preserve every life, no matter how frail and vulnerable. We can remember this time when euthanasia no longer seemed necessary."

Thank you Kevin and Theo. Euthanasia is not an essential service and it is not healthcare.

French society will be stepping off a moral precipice should it decide to starve Lambert to death.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Vincent Lambert

The Vincent Lambert case which concerns the withdrawal of food and fluids of a cognitively disabled man, also opens the question of the goals of the euthanasia lobby.

Sign the petition: Protect Vincent Lambert's Life (Link). 

Kevin Yuill, author of the book Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, examines the Lambert case from a different perspective in his article published by Spiked on May 27, 2019. 

Kevin Yuill

Yuill examines the Lambert case based on the involvement of the euthanasia lobby. Yuill writes:

Vincent Lambert has become central to the right-to-die debate in France. His face has appeared in French media over the past six years as a symbol of a passionate argument over his future and the future of euthanasia law in France. Lambert, 42, a former nurse, has spent the past 11 years in a vegetative state since suffering severe brain damage from a 2008 motoring accident. 

His high-profile case, which pits his wife and five of his siblings against his devout Catholic parents, a sister and a half-brother, has become a judicial soap opera. It has also divided France, where euthanasia is illegal but doctors are allowed to put terminally ill patients into deep sedation or to withdraw their treatment altogether. The case turns on questions about the degree of Lambert’s consciousness, and about whether or not he would wish to live in such a condition. 

Since 2013, Lambert’s medical team has favoured removing the feeding and water tubes that keep him alive. His parents have resisted. On the evening of 20 May, a French court dramatically ordered doctors to resume life support, reversing an earlier judicial ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that said Lambert should be removed from life support. This follows a request by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the United Nations, which demanded that the removal of nutrition and hydration be delayed pending further study.

Yuill examines the issues in the case:

There are several significant elements to the story. The first concerns Lambert’s condition... His doctors consider him to be suffering not from ‘brain death’, but rather from severe brain damage. He can open his eyes. He can look at a person. He wakes up, sleeps, smiles, sometimes cries, and responds to stimulations – but there is little evidence that he can communicate. 

Lambert, who breathes on his own, does not benefit from his life, his doctor and his wife and five of his siblings argue. ... 

Second, as the medical team has hinted, the question of assisted suicide and euthanasia overshadows the case. Lambert could have had his treatment removed had he left a living will, which are legal in France. Doctors may withdraw care under a 2005 law that says life should not be prolonged ‘artificially’ through ‘unnecessary or disproportionate treatment’. Those opposing the withdrawal of hydration and nutrition point out that a precedent might be set where those whose lives are considered to be ‘without meaning’ might be starved to death.

The Lambert case may affect Organ Donation:

There is another concern. Setting a precedent for Lambert might endanger other young people in similar circumstances because of the potential that their organs might be considered more valuable than their lives. From 2020 in the UK, organ donation will be automatic under the term ‘presumed consent’. A person will have to opt out, actively, of organ donation. The Lambert case is significant for the UK. Will medical teams make decisions about the value of a young accident victim’s life based on the desirability of his or her organs?

Yuill shows how the Lambert case shows the euthanasia lobby lie.

The Lambert case also gives the lie to assisted-dying campaigners’ purported concerns for autonomy. Lambert has no say in the matter – it is impossible to work out what his wishes are. Wesley Smith, with the Patients Rights Council, has argued that cases like this are less about a ‘right to die’ than about having ‘no right to live’. Everyone would be up in arms if a vulnerable person in care was starved to death, but that is where the Lambert case is heading – towards a medically unnecessary but, in some people’s view, a socially desirable killing. 

It is not surprising that right-to-die advocates have leapt upon the case, despite it not being about autonomy or rights. Former French president Francois Hollande used the case in 2014 to publicise his attempt to change the law to allow ‘medical assistance to end one’s life in dignity’. Michel Neveu, a representative of the French campaign for euthanasia and assisted suicide – L’Association pour le droit de mourir dans la dignité (ADMD) – said Lambert ‘would have told his wife that, if he were in a state like the one we know today, he would like to benefit from deep sedation…’. 

Right-to-die campaigners already project their worst nightmares (‘I would never want to live like that’) on to disabled people. As a result, the lives of many disabled individuals are valued as considerably less worthy than others. It is not that Lambert suffers, as neuroscientists noted – it is that his continued existence is an inconvenience. Rather than allow him to live out whatever limited life he has, many in French society argue that it is ‘undignified’ for his life to continue.

Yuill then concludes that food and drink are not futile.

Whereas aggressive medical treatment can and should be withdrawn when it is futile, denying a vulnerable person the food and drink necessary to keep them alive cannot be seen as futile. Lambert’s death will only serve a social purpose. There are no medical reasons at all for it. French society will be stepping off a moral precipice should it decide to starve Lambert to death.

Sign the petition: Protect Vincent Lambert's Life (Link). 

Kevin Yuill teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan. (Buy this book from Amazon (UK).)

Stopping Assisted Suicide in Your State

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is co-organizing a Campaign Training Session on Friday, January 25 and Conference on Saturday, January 26.

These events will be at the Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Midtown hotel in Albuquerque New Mexico. 

Book your hotel room by calling: 505-312-9842.

The Training Session on Friday, January 25 will go from 1:00 - 5:00 pm followed by a screening of the film -  Fatal Flaws at 7:00 pm with Kevin Dunn, the producer of the film.

The Conference on Saturday, January 26 will run from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. 

* We have added an impressive International speaker. Fabian Stahle, the Swedish researcher who uncovered the definition of terminal used by the Oregon Health Authority which extends assisted suicide to non-terminal persons. 

The cost to attend the Training Session is $35. The cost to attend the Symposium is $50. The cost to attend both events is $80. 

You can also watch the Conference simulcast with access code for $30.

Register online or download the  registration form  (fillable in Adobe Acrobat).

Speakers include:

Hon Nick Goiran, Member of Parliament from Western Australia. Nick authored the minority report opposing the legalization of assisted suicide in Western Australia.

Diane Coleman, President & CEO of the disability rights group Not Dead Yet. Diane is a leading voice opposing assisted suicide for more than 25 years.

Alexandra Snyder

Amy Hasbrouck, Founder of Toujours Vivant – Not Dead Yet and the President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Amy is also a trained lawyer.

Alexandra Snyder, Executive Director of Life Legal Defense Foundation and the lead lawyer in the challenge to the California assisted suicide law.

Kevin Yuill, Professor of History at the University of Sunderland, UK. He is the author of - Assisted Suicide: The Liberal Humanist Case Against Legalization.

Dr Annette Hanson

Annette Hanson, Forensic Psychiatrist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Hanson co-authored the article: Twelve Myths About Assisted Suicide and Medical Aid in Dying.

Fabian Stahle is the Swedish researcher who uncovered the Oregon Health Authority change in the definition of terminal. 

 
Catherine Glenn Foster, President and CEO of AUL and a lawyer. Catherine was the founding Executive Director of EPC-USA in 2016.

Nancy Elliott

Nancy Elliott, former New Hampshire State Representative and President of EPC-USA.

Margaret Dore, lawyer and President of Choice is an Illusion.

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. He is an author and has done speaking tours throughout the world.

Kevin Dunn, Producer of Fatal Flaws: Legalizing Assisted Death and The Euthanasia Deception. Kevin is an award-winning filmmaker who operates DunnMedia & Entertainment.

Register online or download the registration form.

The case for assisted suicide is inherently flawed.

This article was published by the Economist Magazine on August 28, 2018.

Kevin Yuill is author of the book: Assisted Suicide - The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization.

Professor Kevin Yuill

The case for assisted suicide seems to consist of terrible stories of people dying protracted, painful deaths and prevented by a cruel law from gaining the relief they seek. But this is not always accurate. As the official reports in Oregon and Washington show, pain is not in the top five reasons why people opt for assisted deaths. It is fear that dominates people’s concerns: of loss of autonomy, loss of enjoyment of life’s activities and loss of dignity. I believe these fears are curable, even if the underlying disease that robs people of such functions is not.

Kevin Yuill: Assisted suicide and the false concept of autonomy.

Lord Falconer characterised the existing law as “incoherent and hypocritical”. But that description seems more apposite for many of the arguments for changing the law. There is an Orwellian self-deception in the idea that “assisted dying” is a safe, healthy way of dying compared to “violent” suicide. But the violence inherent in suicide comes not from the method used, but from the extinction of life from a body.

Then there is the unresolvable problem of where to draw the line. The orthodox argument, ably expressed by Lord Falconer, has it that we should draw the line at six months. But this doesn’t add up. If we argue that the relief of suffering is the most important issue, then six months to live is utterly random; people who have more time clearly suffer. As Lord Neuberger, the president of Britain’s Supreme Court between 2012 and 2017, said in relation to Tony Nicklinson, a man with locked-in syndrome who campaigned unsuccessfully for the right to die: “There seems to me to be more justification in assisting people to die if they have the prospect of living many years a life that they regarded as valueless, miserable and often painful, than if they have only a few months to live.”

When should someone be allowed to help someone else to die? The moral essence of the question concerns our attitude towards suicide. Is it okay in some instances, when someone is really suffering? When they have certain horrific diseases? When they are over 70, as a bill proposed by the Dutch government would have it? Or should we approve it whenever someone says they are suffering unbearably?

My case is not against suicide per se. Though most suicides are tragedies, others, such as that of Captain Oates, who sacrificed himself for the good of his comrades on the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole in 1912, are beautiful acts, the epitome of selflessness, duty to one’s fellows and courage.

Our attitude to suicide is necessarily ambivalent. All free, competent adults should be free to make the decision whether or not to live. I disagree with my good friend Peter Saunders when he says “we recognise that personal autonomy is not absolute.” In relation to the decision to commit suicide, it must be (and with assisted suicide, it is not).

Anyone determined enough to do so will likely take their own life, regardless of laws. I am on record as supporting the removal of what I see as the patronising prevention of competent adults getting their hands on deadly drugs. It is the assistance—the complicity of the community in the death of a human being—that is the problem.

Kevin Yuill: Legalizing assisted suicide is dangerous. Just look at Canada.

Kevin Yuill lectures in history at the University of Sunderland, in the UK, and is the author of Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation

Assisted suicide and the false concept of autonomy.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Professor Kevin Yuill

The Economist, a Magazine that promotes a pro-euthanasia / assisted suicide position recently published a series of articles supporting and opposing assisted dying. 

On August 22, 2018, The Economist published an article by Kevin Yuill, author of the book: Assisted Suicide - The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization.

In this article, Yuill focuses on the false concept of autonomy, with respect to assisted suicide. He states:

The most serious case made by advocates for assisted suicide is autonomy. Yet what stands out for this most recent toleration of at least some suicides is the lack of autonomy; to be legitimate, it seems, suicide must be sanctioned by that new priesthood, medical authority.

In the Netherlands, euthanasia (where the doctor accomplishes the act) has risen rapidly since it was legalised in 2002. Last year 6,306 cases of euthanasia were reported to the Regionale Toetsingscommissies Euthansie, compared with 2,910 in 2010. With assisted suicides, where the patient must do it themselves, the rise is much slower: 250 reported in 2017, compared to 242 in 2014 and 182 in 2010.

As Henk Blanken, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease recently complained in the Guardian, “when push comes to shove, the patient is not the one who decides on their euthanasia. It is the doctor who decides, and no one else.” Death has become one more of life’s events that we no longer seem to be able to do ourselves.

We are not simply our bodies. Assisted suicide defines our lives in overly physical terms. ... With assisted suicide, we ask that doctors, experts only in our somatic existence, play God. When someone else is involved in our death, it is not just our wishes that are involved.

Yuill then explains the pressure exerted to extend assisted dying laws, once assisted suicide is legal. He states:

Often nations with legalised euthanasia and/or assisted suicide have quickly extended the criteria beyond the original remit of deaths inflicted by terminal illness. In Canada, where medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was legalised in 2016, what was a moral compass surely twists in the wind. One of at least 1,300 who was granted it in the first year was a 77-year-old woman suffering from non-terminal osteoarthritis. After physicians refused, a judge ruled that she must be granted her request as she was “almost 80” with “no quality of life”. Ontario has abolished freedom of conscience by requiring doctors to participate in killing patients, whatever their beliefs. The current restrictions in the law are being challenged on many fronts by those who argue that their suffering matches that of those who are granted MAiD. Who can disagree? Having already allowed euthanasia for, among other things, tinnitus and vision loss, the Dutch House of Representatives held a plenary session on the widely supported citizen’s initiative, “Completed life”, that demands the right for all Dutch people over 70 who feel tired of life to have assisted deaths.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, over the issue of “psychiatric” euthanasia, there finally appears to be some recognition that a mistake has been made somewhere along the line. In Belgium in 2014-15, 124 people were euthanised because of a “mental and behavioural disorder”.

Yuill reminds the readers that the British parliament defeated an assisted dying bill in 2015. He states:

A wise government will, like the British parliament in 2015, refuse to make assisted dying legal.

Giving doctors the right in law to kill their patients, results in an ever expanding definition of who should die.

456 patients killed in a British hospital

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I

Kevin Yuill

n his article: The scandal of under valuing human life, that was published by Spiked on June 28, 2018; Kevin Yuill the author of: Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation examines the attitudes that precipitated the mass killing "life shortening" of patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire between 1989 - 2000.

Yuill correctly points out that if assisted suicide or euthanasia were legal that, similar to Gosport, killing would become more mainstream and simply accepted. Yuill writes:

Writing in The Times, Dominic Lawson says there is something obscene about the ‘shortening’ of the lives of more than 450 patients who were staying in Gosport War Memorial Hospital. He is right. 

The Gosport scandal concerns the ‘shortening’ of 456 patients’ lives through the excessive use of painkillers at the hospital in Hampshire between 1989 and 2000. An inquiry, the Gosport Independent Panel, says such ‘life-shortening’ had become virtually routine. 

The use of the word shortening is striking. We might say that Jack the Ripper ‘shortened the lives’ of prostitutes in the East End of London. In fact, if we employ the rather ludicrous measurement of time left – QALYs, or quality-of-life years, as some experts say when referring to care for the elderly in particular – then the doctors who presided over the regime of ‘shortening’ lives in Gosport undoubtedly stole more time than the Ripper could ever have managed. 

Even the term ‘patients’ in this discussion masks the real people involved, with their experiences, lives, loves, families, and, yes, hopes. The report into the scandal anonymised mothers, fathers, grandmothers, brave veterans, beloved teachers, aunts and uncles, friends and rivals, reporting as if they were victims of some foreign disaster rather than having been purposefully killed.

Yuill then explains that sometimes heavy sedation is required to prevent suffering:

There are, admittedly, some situations – now thankfully rare – when a doctor must heavily sedate patients to prevent suffering in the last hours of life. But Gosport wasn’t like this. It appears that the killings took place because the people involved were ‘inconvenient’. This was revealed in a meeting between members of staff about an annoying patient, where the following alarming exchange took place: ‘We agreed that if he wasn’t careful he would “talk himself on to a syringe driver”.’ According to the report, that patient, who was able to walk, talk and dress himself, did have a syringe driver and died the next day. Many others were also seemingly despatched for being irritating. Fifty-five per cent of those who were given lethal doses of diamorphine were not in pain. In 29 per cent of cases, the notes give no justification at all for the lethal dose.

Yuill then challenges the assisted suicide lobby and their cultural engineering:

Much more than an event like the Grenfell disaster, the treatment of these individuals indicates how far a moral crisis besets this country. As expressed all too clearly in our language, human lives are no longer sacred. Another euphemism beloved by people like Polly Toynbee, who summoned her mother from the grave yet again to argue for legalised assisted suicide, is ‘choice’. Everyone wants to have choice. ‘Compassion and Choices’ is the new, improved name for the Euthanasia Society of America. British lobbyists Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) want to ‘allow a dying person the choice to control their death’. 

Let’s leave aside the fetishising of the moment of death when people seem to want their favourite music playing (hint: you won’t hear the end of the song). It is actually this misuse of the concept of ‘choice’ that led to the monstrous events in Gosport. The ‘choice’ referred to by pro-assisted dying organisations is actually suicide. But by calling it a choice, we remove all moral responsibility from the action. The culture of assisted dying reduces the most profound decision a human can make – whether to shuffle off this mortal coil – to a medicalised menu selection. The decision to execute a human being in the United States – even a horrific rapist/murderer – is at least attended with ritual and ceremony, as if something of huge moral importance is occurring. With assisted dying, suicide is given as a treatment option in a pamphlet. The message is ‘we won’t judge’ – that is, ‘we don’t care if you live or die’. 

If such an ‘option’ is offered so casually to individuals, why would it be surprising that a doctor should treat human lives just as casually? If the act of suicide carries no real moral responsibility for the individual, why would killing a patient – or ‘shortening a life’ – carry any special moral responsibility for a doctor? We make it easy to wink and, as the Gosport report notes, tell the nurses to ‘Make the patient comfortable. I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.’ 

Elderly people already find themselves resented for inconveniently continuing to exist, for voting for Brexit, for blocking beds, for taking up the time of harried NHS staff. Assisted suicide is always preferred for those who have little time left. In the country that has tolerated assisted death the longest – the Netherlands – plans are afoot to extend assisted death to all those over 70 who are ‘tired of life’. How many lonely elderly Dutch people will be despatched in a similar fashion to the patients at Gosport? 

Hopefully someone will be found responsible for the crimes that took place in Gosport. But it is really an entire culture that supports assisted dying, that believes that life and death are nothing but menu selections, that must be changed if we are to avoid future scandals like this one.

Sadly, the instances of killing, rather than caring, or intentional overdose is not rare. Attitudes that led to the killing "life shortening" of 456 patients at Gosport are linked to a culture that accepts these actions. A Netherlands study found that 431 people were killed without request in 2015 and a study from Flanders Belgium found that more than 1000 people were killed without request in 2013.

Legalizing lethal injection (upon request) creates more social acceptance of doctors killing their patients, even without request.

Kevin Yuill - Assisted Dying: A failure of Psychiatry.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, who is an academic who has written extensively about euthanasia and assisted suicide wrote an interesting article that was published by Spiked titled: Assisted Dying: A failure of Psychiatry.

In his article, Yuill comments on the death of Aurelia Brouwers, the 29-year-old Dutch woman who died by euthanasia for psychiatric reasons and the research by Fabian Stahle, from Sweden, uncovering hidden problems with the Oregon assisted suicide law.

Yuill comments on Brouwer's death:

Brouwers had carefully planned her death – in her pyjamas, listening to Hugh Laurie, with her beloved pink T-Rex cuddly toy, Dido – ‘[he] has been my support since I was four-years-old’, as Aurelia put it. She asked her parents to care for Dido, who is to get ‘a spot on the coffin’ at her funeral. 

Brouwers told an interviewer: ‘I think that after such a rotten life I am entitled to a dignified death – people who have a serious illness get a chance for a worthy ending, so why is it so difficult for people who are psychologically ill?’

• 29-year-old Dutch woman scheduled to die by assisted death for psychological reasons. 

Yuill asks the question: at what stage do psychiatric professionals admit defeat and sanction the death of a patient? Yuill states

In the Netherlands as it stands, nine per cent of requests for euthanasia due to ‘unbearable’ and ‘hopeless’ psychological suffering are granted, although it is rare that the patients are as young as Brouwers. Brouwers had decided long ago that her treatment was not working and that her suffering was too great to bear. And her doctors eventually gave her the green light. But when is psychological suffering deemed ‘unbearable’? When is it adjudged ‘hopeless’? These seem to be incredibly subjective criteria.

Yuill challenges the UK assisted dying group Dignity in Dying who have stated that Brouwers would not qualify for assisted death based on the proposed UK legislation.

In the UK, Dignity in Dying and other campaigners for assisted dying insist that cases like Brouwers’ could never happen under their proposed legislation. Citing assisted-dying legislation in Oregon, they claim that similarly ‘robust safeguards’ would be implemented in the UK, preventing cases similar to Brouwers’. 

But, if assisted dying is legalised, is it realistic to expect ‘autonomy’ and ‘compassion’ to be reserved only for those who suffer from life-shortening physical diseases? Although Dignity in Dying denies it, assisted-dying laws are always extended beyond their original justifications. Indeed, in every nation where euthanasia has been legalised, the parameters in which assisted dying is permitted eventually always stretch beyond those with ‘less than six months to live’.

Yuill comments on the recent research by Fabian Stahle, into the Oregon assisted suicide law based on the proposed safeguards in the UK as being similar to the Oregon assisted suicide law:

Stahle had asked the Oregon Health Authority whether a diabetic person who was only dying because they refused treatment would qualify for an assisted death. The OHA’s answer was a straight ‘yes’, and it admitted that this had always been the case. 

Indeed, Oregon oncologist Dr Charles Blanke noted a difficult case regarding a young woman with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who had a 90 per cent chance of survival with treatment but refused it. Blanke acceded to her demand for an assisted death, despite the fact she was likely to lose potentially ‘seven decades’ of life. Opportunities for self-induced terminal illness are numerous. Anyone with anorexia nervosa, for example, can bring themselves to a terminal condition, thus qualifying for an assisted death in Oregon. 

... In Oregon, for example, pain does not figure in the top five reasons why citizens choose assisted death. Instead, it is fear that dominates the reasoning of those seeking to end their lives: fear of not being able to participate in enjoyable activities; fear of loss of autonomy; fear of loss of physical capabilities; fear of loss of dignity; and fear of being a burden. Fear, however, is curable, even if the underlying physical condition is not.

• Oregon Health Authority reveals hidden problems with the Oregon assisted suicide model.

Yuill ends his article by recognizing how legalizing assisted suicide corrupts society:

... But when society legalises assisted dying, it surely corrupts the fundamental belief in the value of life that underlies all medical treatment. Compassion in the past meant doing what we felt was best for a patient. It meant disagreeing with a suicidal patient who felt her life was worthless. Today, compassion seems to mean respecting someone’s requests, even when we don’t feel that those requests are in his or her best interests. As Brouwers declared in her blog in January: ‘Respect that I will die Friday.’ 

Brouwers’ sad case is a grim reminder that a society that sanctions suicide is a society that has given up on certain people. It is a society that has lost its moral bearings. An individual may lose all hope and may feel that life is no longer worth living. She may even take her own life, and there is little we can do to prevent that. But, surely, if a fellow human being expresses the wish to die, we must be loyal to her life, not her wishes.

Kevin Yuill teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland. His book, Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

I'm an atheist and against euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, who wrote the book - Assisted Suicide: The Liberal Humanist Case Against Legalisation, wrote an article that was published today in the Australian Spectator titled: I'm an athiest and against euthanasia.

Yuill, who teaches American studies at the University of Sunderland, begins his article by challenging the euthanasia lobby claim that only religious people oppose euthanasia. Yuill writes:

Jeremy Irvine spent two years making a documentary entitled Fade to Black, which follows terminally ill Peter Short’s final months as he transforms from businessman into a right-to-die activist. Irvine, who claims the film canvasses the ‘full spectrum’ of views about whether Australia should allow assisted dying, came up with this bizarre claim: ‘Without exception those who opposed assisted dying laws did so because of their religious beliefs — even those who offered other reasons for their views.’ 

‘I spent probably 12 months searching and I found it really tough to find people who opposed assisted dying laws who weren’t looking at [sic] from a religious view.’ ‘Even people who would not talk about their religion, if you dug a little deeper, it would always come to that: “Oh, I’m a Catholic”. I didn’t find anybody.’ 

I feel like the kid at the front of the class with his hand up as the teacher scans everywhere else in the room for a hand. Me! Over here, Mr Irvine! In 2013, I published a book entitled Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalisation. I have been writing about this subject for more than 20 years. OK, the book has sold modestly, shall we say, down under. But it is there if you look for it. And, I really am an atheist. 

Irvine might have asked his fellow supporter of assisted dying, Andrew Denton. Mr Denton knows my ideas, if not me. He has berated me on some of his podcasts (he added eerie music to selected parts of a speech I did in Adelaide in 2015, which he recorded with my permission, like a morbid DJ). I wrote to him in a friendly and respectable manner more than once to point out some inaccuracies and, more importantly, to open up a dialogue. 

He never replied. He’d had the chance to speak to me before. He sat through my conference speech in Adelaide, where I was billed as an atheist. Did he attempt to interview me (though he interviewed many of the others at the conference) or even introduce himself? No. 

I’m not the only atheist in the “No” camp. Prominent British actress and comedienne Liz Carr has recently returned from your fair country and, lo, she, too, is an atheist. So was the late great Stella Young. We exist!

Yuill continues his article by explaining why he opposes euthanasia:

Legalizing assisted suicide is dangerous - just look at Canada

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Professor and author, Kevin Yuill, has written another excellent article that Spike published on July 20, 2017 titled: Legalizing assisted suicide is dangerous - just look at Canada. 

Yuill, who was born in Canada, refers to the recent Canadian experience with assisted dying to urge British citizens to reject assisted suicide.

The British court is currently dealing with the Conway case, a case that seeks to strike down the laws protecting people from assisted suicide in the UK. With reference to the recent Canadian experience, Yuill writes:

The CBC reported recently that, by the end of 2016, there had been 1,324 cases of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada – that is, assisted suicide and euthanasia. This number is likely to increase. Before the ink was dry on C-14, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association launched a court case to ‘strike down’ as unconstitutional the somewhat slippery provision that a person’s ‘natural death must be reasonably foreseeable’ to qualify for death by lethal injection. 

In the weeks that followed C-14’s passage into law, the Canadian federal government announced that it would conduct research into the possibility of extending the benefits of euthanasia to people with dementia, ‘mature children’, and those with solely psychological suffering. In the case of a 77-year-old woman suffering from non-terminal osteoarthritis, the judge chided doctors who had refused euthanasia on the grounds that her disease was not terminal. He granted the woman the right to die as she was ‘almost 80’ with ‘no quality of life’. And, of course, her death was judged to be ‘reasonably foreseeable’.

In the province of Ontario, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care announced that it would force doctors to either euthanise patients who wanted to die, or refer them to someone who would. Three years ago, it was a crime for doctors to kill their patients in Canada. Now, doctors could lose their licence for refusing to participate in killing their patients. 

Judges and juries are generally sympathetic in tragic cases like Conway’s. But there is no need to change the law. We should take the court case in Canada, which opened a Pandora’s box, as a warning about the dangers of legalising assisted suicide.

Previous articles by Kevin Yuill

• The narcissism of assisted suicide.
• Isn't assisted suicide really suicide?

Kevin Yuill: Me Before You is fiction, but so are most arguments for assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill, a history professor at Sunderland University, wrote an excellent article that was published in the Telegraph today. Yuill's argues that Me Before You is simply one of many fictional stories about assisted suicide, but then he also states that arguments supporting assisted suicide are also fictionally based. Yuill writes:

There is an outbreak of fictional assisted suicides, of which the film released this week, Me Before You, is simply the most recent example. Before, we had Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside, One True Thing, and episodes of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Coronation Street, and Hollyoaks. Such a plot-device is neither new nor "taboo-busting" – that taboo has been well and truly busted. 

It is interesting that the case for assisted suicide exists more in the fevered imagination of authors and screenwriters than in reality. Only a handful of Britons kill themselves in Swiss assisted suicide clinics every year; the rate of fictional representations to people actually killing themselves in Switzerland must be nearly 1:1. But Me Before You has sparked protests, mostly from disabled groups, because it implicitly asks the question: If you were quadriplegic (or severely disabled), would/should you kill yourself? 

Of course, the film is fiction and not particularly imaginative fiction at that, but there is a real context to the unease of groups of disabled activists like Not Dead Yet who have protested outside cinemas.

Yuill outlines some of the information from his book: Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization (2015) 

The whole case for assisted suicide is fictional. Rather than empathy, it is based on anxiety in the worried well. “I’d rather die than suffer like you do”, some actually say out loud to disabled people, who, in my experience are a feisty lot who enjoy (and all too often must fight for) their lives. There are real disabled lives – and there is the narcissistic projection of gloomy imaginings onto the disabled. 

The narcissism of assisted suicide

This article was published on August 11, 2015 by Spiked.

A shocking case that shows that assisted suicide is about more than alleviating suffering.

Dr Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill, an academic and an author.

In his sharply observed book The Culture of Narcissism, the American social critic Christopher Lasch remarked that, in modern life, ‘The usual defences against the ravages of age – identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one’s immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past – can do nothing for the narcissist’. 

In a generation that has forgotten that it stands in the midst of a long line of past and future generations, Lasch noted, many live ‘for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal wellbeing, health, and psychic security’.

As Lasch later lamented, his exploration of narcissism was widely misunderstood. In his writing, narcissism referred not to a confident self-centredness, but to the inability of an entire culture to see beyond the corners of itself, to understand the self’s place in history, or to believe in its ability rationally to control the future. Lasch claimed that the survival of the self – not self-improvement – had become the highest aspiration.

There is more than a whiff of narcissistic survivalism in the openness of many Western societies to assisted suicide. This was best symbolised by the trip Gill Pharaoh, a healthy, 75-year-old retired nurse, took to the LifeCircle suicide clinic in Switzerland. Pharaoh, who died on 21 July this year, was not ill, but wished to die. She noted in her final blog that she wanted ‘people to remember me as I now am – as a bit worn around the edges but still recognisably me!’.

This ‘snapshot’ sentiment, whereby we preserve ourselves for posterity, is surely illusory. We can neither control how people remember us nor can we preserve a moment in time. There is no perfect moment or ideal physical presence, no ‘real me’, because life is a process, constantly unfolding. We continually learn and change, and the ‘authentic’ self cannot be captured at one specific time. Nor is a ‘perfect’ or merely ‘good’ death meaningful to the deceased. Killing oneself does not preserve anything – it destroys the prospect of further experiences and interactions.

Pharaoh resolutely rejected religion; she once complained that she was ‘ignored by the law, which originates from a god in whom we have no belief’. But, in the absence of any broader meaning or belief system, it is almost as if assisted-suicide advocates like Pharaoh are recreating a religion of the self. This is a religion that sees the world as a mirror, that perceives the importance of people in terms of how they are perceived, and that feels no obligation to the previous generations that struggled to make life easier and leave a legacy for future generations. It is this mindset that leads people like Pharaoh to take their own lives. But why would she imagine that those in the future would welcome her decision to sacrifice her life – all because of a fear that it would get harder and less pleasurable?

Pharaoh had been a member of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS), a UK-based group that aims to change existing law to provide elderly, mentally competent individuals, who are suffering from various health problems, with a doctor’s assistance to die. Many of those who belong to these groups see themselves as rugged individuals who blaze their own paths. But this is also delusional. Rugged individualism would surely demand that you do the act yourself, rather than get government assistance to do it. Pharaoh was a nurse who surely knew how to ensure her own death without having to fly to Switzerland. But part of the plea for assisted suicide is always a plea for official validation of suffering.

The narcissist feels a constant need to be noticed, to be recognised, to have his or her feelings validated and find some reflection of his or her self in the world. If the narcissist is fearful, then the world must do something about it. The narcissist sees a world that does not feel their existential pain (after all, physical pain does not even feature in the top-five reasons why people in Oregon opt for assisted suicide) as the cause of that suffering.

If this is not narcissism, then why are Pharaoh and other assisted-suicide advocates so vocal about their need, not just to slip away quietly, but to have their decision validated by the state? The drive behind the assisted-suicide lobby is the idea that the world must mould itself around the perceived needs of ‘afflicted’ individuals.

The case of Tom Mortier shows how euthanasia advocates won't stop at the terminally ill.

The following article was originally published in the Telegraph UK on February 2, 2015.

Kevin Yuill

By Kevin Yuill

Tom Mortier never paid much attention to the discussion about voluntary death in his country. “I was like just about anyone else here in Belgium: I didn’t care at all,” he said. “If people want to die, it’s probably their choice. It didn’t concern me.”

But in April, 2012, ten years after the law changed to allow euthanasia, Mortier, a university lecturer, received a message at work. His 64-year-old mother, Godelieve De Troyer, who suffered from severe depression, had been euthanised the previous day. Would he be able to make the arrangements at the morgue?

His mother had largely broken off contact with the family but had informed him by email three months earlier that she was looking into euthanasia. Mortier did not dream that her request would be taken seriously because she was in perfect physical health. After his mother’s death, the doctor who gave her the injection assured Mortier that he was “absolutely certain” his mother didn’t want to live anymore. The shock felt by Mortier at the sudden – and unnecessary – loss of his mother inspired him to become a leading campaigner against Belgian euthanasia law.

Tom Mortier

Disturbing as Mortier’s case is, there are many supporters of 'assisted dying' in the UK who insist that it is not relevant here. Dignity in Dying, a slick and well-funded advocate organization, indignantly states that Belgium and the Netherlands – where a review committee ruled that the euthanasia of 47-year-old Gaby Olthuis, who suffered from tinnitus, was “careless” – have little to do with the law now slowly pushing its way through the House of Lords. Look away, they say, from entire nations where voluntary death has been legalized a few miles from our shores; instead, look to Oregon, a little state on the Pacific coast of the United States with less than two per cent of the country’s population which has become the go-to comparison for British euthanasia advocates.

They are wrong, of course. Belgium, not Oregon, is the future of assisted dying. In the US, a national campaign prioritizes the passage of assisted dying legislation across the country (with only three states currently permitting it). No one in any of the states which already have it will campaign to have the criteria extended to those who are not terminally ill for fear that it they would jeopardize the rolling campaign elsewhere.