Healthy woman who dies by assisted suicide in Switzerland was likely depressed.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In September 2008, Lady Warnock, one of Britain's leading moral philosophers stated in an interview that:

Pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain. 

She insisted that there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society. 

She hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.

The recent case of a physically healthy 75-year-old retired British nurse who died by assisted suicide in Switzerland further opens the door to pressure on the older people to die when she stated in her blog:

I have always suspected that an ideal shelf life for many people is about 70 years. 

I am not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but Gil Pharoah, even though she states that she is not depressed, seems likely to be depressed when she stated in her blog:

I can no longer walk the distances I used to enjoy so the happy hours spent exploring the streets of London are just a memory now. 

I cannot do the garden with the enthusiasm I once had and I find fifteen minutes is more than enough time spent weeding or digging. Even that short time can result in a day on the sofa or a visit to the osteopath. 

My tinnitus is a big distraction. My hearing loss is helped by using hearing aids, but the tinnitus seems to enjoy competition, and seems to increase in volume, to meet the increased external noise, so I find it impossible to talk in a group of more than four people, and often have to activate the subtitles on the TV. I do not enjoy the carnivals like Notting Hill or Gay Pride which I once so loved. 

I do not have any desire to travel any more –there is nowhere I want to visit enough to spend hours in an aeroplane or airport. 

I have always loved cooking but I find it an effort now and prefer to have a couple of friends for lunch rather than a large late dinner party. Not to mention the hundred and one other minor irritations like being unable to stand for long, carry a heavy shopping bag, run for a bus, remember the names of books I have read, or am reading, or their authors. 

And I have a number of aches and pains which restrict my pleasure in life generally although none are totally incapacitating.

John Southall, Pharoah's life partner, stated to ITV news that:

I had plenty of notice, so it's not like it is perhaps for most couples when one dies unexpectedly. 

Gill has always said she would never grow old. Her longest-standing friends say when she was in her thirties she said fifty would be enough. And then she said as time went on, sixty. Then it became seventy. And she got to seventy and started taking it more seriously.

These statements represent a dreariness towards living that is likely related to depression. Depression symptoms and warning signs include:

• Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness,
• Loss of interest in daily activities,
• Loss of energy,

Pharoah also exhibited signs of suicidal ideation, a symptom of depression by exhibiting:

• An unusual pre-occupation with death and dying,
• Talking about killing or harming one-self,
• Saying this like "everyone would be better off without me" or "I want out",
• A sudden switch from being extremely depressed to acting calm and happy.

If you are having difficulties with suicidal thoughts contact Your Life Counts.

Pharoah did not need suicide assistance, she needed good psychological care for what was likely a case of depression.

When further analyzed, this assisted suicide case should result in less support for assisted suicide when the House of Commons in Britain debates an assisted suicide bill next month.

Last year, a healthy Italian woman died at a Swiss suicide clinic because she was unhappy about how she looked. In April 2013, an Italian man died at a Swiss suicide clinic after receiving a wrong medical diagnosis.

Look beyond the suffering

Alison Davis, the inspired leader of the disability right group - No Less Human in the UK, recently sent a letter that was published in the Herald newspaper in UK.

Davis was responding to Mary Warnock's comments concerning the supposed "safeguards" that would be part of a bill to legalize euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.

Warnock is the same person who suggested in September 2008 that people with dementia may have a 'duty to die'.

Alison Davis wrote:

Mary Warnock makes a fundamental mistake when she suggests that so long as a bill legalising euthanasia/assisted suicide has sufficient “safeguards”, sick and disabled people need not worry that they will be first in the line of candidates for the lethal dose (Why sometimes it’s rational to choose death, Opinion, October 24). There is a more basic problem than relying on “safeguards” which, of course, would be written by the very people who want to legally hasten the end of some people’s lives.

Typical “safeguards” state that the person requesting death must be terminally ill or have an incurable disability; they must be adult, suffering “unbearably and unrelievably” and, crucially,the “choice” must be entirely theirs. All well and good, one might think (that is, if one were not a member of any of those categories).

Let us now consider a person who qualifies under all these “safeguards”.

She has an incurable disability which entails using a wheelchair full time, and her condition is degenerating. It is causing extreme physical pain which the best efforts of many teams of doctors have been unable to alleviate. Her doctors think her life expectancy is very short. An intelligent adult (with a university degree), she says repeatedly, to anyone who will listen, that she wants to die. Feeling unheard by those who could “help” her, she seriously attempts suicide several times, and is saved only by friends. She is furious when she comes around to find herself still in this world.

Legalising euthanasia/assisted suicide would seem to be a boon for a patient like this.

Ten years on, the woman is still disabled, still uses a wheelchair, still has extreme pain. She has moved to a different area where local doctors conclude that since she has lasted 10 years, the prognosis of a very short lifespan must have been wrong. The big change, however, is that she no longer wants to die. She has found that she can use her talents to help others, even more vulnerable than herself, to live and to have better lives than they otherwise would. Fast forward a further 15 years and she is still alive, more determined than ever to live whatever life she has left to the full.

Would the Warnocks of this world agree to add a waiting time – 10 or 20 years – to any bill they draw up, in case of a change of mind? Because human beings are fallible, because life can be good even with great pain, because nobody knows when doctors’ prognoses will be wrong, it is sheer folly to legalise assisted suicide for one group of people because they suffer in certain ways, while spending large amounts of money on “suicide prevention programmes” to prevent the suicides of others who suffer in a different way.

You will have guessed, I’m sure, that I am the woman who wanted to die for 10 years, is still alive today, and who still wants to live. If I had died 25 years ago, I would have missed the best years of my life. Mary Warnock’s mistake is that she seems unable to look past the suffering to see the person, a sad afflication indeed.

Alison Davis - Dorset

Everyone who knows and loves Alison is happy that she is alive. She is truly an inspiring woman.

Baroness Warnock says that: Doctors who refuse euthanasia are wicked

Baroness Warnock, the infamous politician and ethicist in the UK, who stated last September that people with dementia had a duty to die has now stated that:

DOCTORS who refuse to help terminally ill patients to kill themselves when they request to die are "genuinely wicked"

Warnock defended her position the euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legalized in the UK on Monday, January 5 at the Northern Ireland Forum for Ethics in Medicine and Healthcare, a multi-disciplinary group which seeks to promote an awareness of ethical issues that arise in the delivery of health and social care in Belfast.

Warnock further stated that:

doctors and nurses should encourage terminally ill patients to decide, while still relatively healthy, whether to be helped commit suicide when they reach a seriously ill state.

The idea of preparing people for assisted suicide will lead to a pressure upon people who do not have social support to "choose" death.

The article stated that fears were raised that doctors could be asked to become "executioners" for the old and dying.

Warnock re-phrased her duty to die concept for people with dementia by stating:

"I believe that if someone is diagnosed as having the beginnings of Alzheimer's or dementia, at that stage it is a positive duty that doctors should talk to them about what will happen when the moment comes where they reach steep decline." ...

"They can be kept alive and are kept alive, but the question has to be: What is the point of the life at the last stages of Alzheimer's or dementia?"

Link to Warnock's previous statements on the duty to die for people with dementia.
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2008/09/dementia-sufferers-may-have-duty-to-die.html

The article stated that Dr Idris Baker, who is a consultant in palliative medicine in Cardiff, gave a speech against euthanasia.

It is interesting that none of the comments by Dr. Baker were published in the article.

The article did state that: A confidential survey of every GP in Northern Ireland by the British Journal of Medical Practice in 2000 found that 70 per cent of GPs would not assist someone to die.

Warnock will speak about voluntary euthanasia in one comment and then state that people have a duty to die in another comment.

Warnock's comments relate closely to the comments by Peter Singer, the Princeton University chair in bioethics who believes that only beings that are self-aware should be considered persons. Thus when you lose a certain level of self-awareness, society stops being responsible for your care or your life.

Baroness Warnock needs to be taken very seriously. Her attitudes promote an acceptance of killing the most vulnerable people in our community and they also create a feeling among the frail elderly that they are not valued and their lives are not worth living.

Society needs to uphold the elderly and treat them with respect and dignity. We need to care for people with dementia, not kill them.

Link to the original article:
http://www.newsletter.co.uk:80/news/Ignoring-a-death-wish-is.4845993.jp

Dying in Dignity leader - Edward Turner questions the assisted suicide death of former Rugby Star - Daniel James

Once again it appears that leaders of the euthanasia lobby group - Dying in Dignity - in the UK have questionned the more radical actions of the world-wide euthanasia lobby.

Last week Philip Nitschke, Australia's Dr. Death, had his appearance at a Irish University cancelled after Dying in Dignity leaders branded his advice as irresponsible and illegal. Nitschke is known for his "peaceful pill" handbook and his suicide promoting and counseling service on the internet.

Today Edward Turner, a trustee of the lobby group Dying in Dignity in the UK, questionned the actions of those who supported Daniel James who travelled to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide at the Swiss Dignitas Assisted Suicide clinic.

Turner stated that while he would like to see a change in UK law to allow 'assisted dying' for terminally ill patients, there was a 'distinction' between those cases and that of Daniel James who whilst paralysed, probably had 'several decades' of life ahead of him.

Turner had accompanied his terminally ill mother to the Swiss Dignitas Clinic. His mother had progressive supranuclear palsy.

Turner was quoted as saying:

"The vast majority of the population wants assisted dying for the terminally ill to be legalised ... but Dan wasn't terminally ill.
Although I advocate assisted dying, I'm basically against assisted suicide."

On the other hand, Baroness Warnock supports the assisted suicide death of Daniel James. She said:

"we had a 'moral obligation to other people to take seriously reached decisions with regard to their own lives equally seriously."

Link to the article on UK's Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1078877/Suicide-rugby-player-decades-live-says-euthanasia-campaigner-mother-died-Swiss-suicide-clinic.html

My thoughts on the case of Daniel James (23) lead me to think about a Canadian hero, Steven Fletcher the member of parliament for Charleswood - St. James - Assiniboia in Winnipeg Manitoba and the current parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Health.


I do not know what Fletcher would say about James's death, but I do know that Fletcher became a complete quadriplegic in 1996, after hitting a moose with his vehicle while travelling to a geological engineering job in northern Manitoba. The accident left him completely paralysed below the neck, and he now requires 24 hour a day attendant care. He was unable to speak for several months, and only regained this ability after a long process of recovery.

A comment in a blog about Daniel James said:
"So Mr James "had decades of life ahead of him" Until you have walked a mile in his shoes how can you know what it feels like to live his life. His parents may suffer a great loss but at least they know they respected his wishes.

Steven Fletcher has lived through similar experiences that Daniel James would have been experiences. He handled the adversity by rising up to become a source of inspiration for people with disabilies.

I also think about my friend Alison Davis, the leader of the group No Less Human in the UK.

Alison was in a similar situation as Daniel James. She wanted to die and attempted to commit suicide. If she had "supportive parents" as James supposedly has, Alison would be dead today. Instead Alison is an active leader of a disability rights group that supports the equality and dignity of people with disabilities and rejects the concept that equality and dignity includes assisted suicide.

James may have also become a great inspiration for others if he had not been abandoned to his supposed wishes.

For more information about Steven Fletcher go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Fletcher

Do the Demented Have a Duty to Die?

Last week the famous UK ethicist, Lady Warnock, stated to a Church of Scotland that people who have dementia/alzheimer's disease have a duty to die.

Ken Connor, the chairman of the board for the Center for a Just Society, wrote an excellent, Christian response to Lady Warnock's idea of the "Duty to Die".

Please link to his article. It is worth reading.

Link to the article by Ken Connor:
http://www.centerforajustsociety.org/press/article.asp?pr=3956

Nobody has a duty to die.

The title of this article would appear to come from a person who opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide. But rather it comes from the Right to Die lobby who are busy doing damage control after Lady Warnock, the esteemed British ethicist stated that people with dementia had a duty to die.

Warnock stated in an article in the Church of Scotland Magazine - Life and Work:

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die."

Sarah Wootten, a leader of the Dying in Dignity euthanasia lobby group tries to distance herself from Warnock's comments by stating:

"Baroness Warnock is right on her first point. Terminally ill adults in unbearable suffering should be able to choose when and where they die, within strict legal safeguards. However, she is very wrong on her second point - absolutely no one has a duty to die."

Wootten leaves out of her article Warnock's strongest comments which were:

"If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die."

In other words, even if you are incapable of making the decision, someone else should be allowed to make the decision to end your life. Therefore the "duty to die" should also be a "duty to kill"

Link to blog entry concerning Lady Warnock's comments:
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2008/09/dementia-sufferers-may-have-duty-to-die.html

Wootten further distances herself from Warnock's comments by stating:
"Of course, some will disagree - those who seek to impose their own beliefs on others and those who do not think we go far enough (read in Warnock). However, Dying in Dignity's position is clear. When even the best end-of-life care cannot allow all terminally ill people to avoid suffering they feel is unbearable, it is sadly inevitable that some of them will resort to traveling abroad to die, botched suicide attempts and "mercy killings". This situation is simply wrong: we need regulation at the end of life that allows choice while protecting vulnerable people."

Link to the article in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/28/socialcare.health
Nicely said Sarah, but where euthanasia is legal and regulated, such as in the Netherlands and Belgium, there are a significant number of cases of abuses and a significant problem with under-reporting of deaths.

In the New England Journal of Medicine study of euthanasia in the Netherlands in 2005 they found that 550 deaths that year in the Netherlands were people who did not request death or indicate any form of consent.

What Wootton and other leaders in the euthanasia lobby tend to ignore is the fact that these decisions cannot be effectively regulated because these are decisions that are made behind closed doors, with family members and medical professionals who have their own personal set of values. Many people believe that an imposed death is the most caring act one can offer for a loved one in their final days.

The only assurance that will ever protect vulnerable people is to always offer the best and most appropriate CARE and to never KILL.

Link to the New England Journal of Medicine article on End-of-life practises in the Netherlands - 2005:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/356/19/1957.pdf

Bioethics Blog Defends Warnock's Call for Killing of People with Dementia

Stephen Drake, the masterful research director for Not Dead Yet discovered that the blog for the American Journal of Bioethics featured an entry by Summer Johnson Ph.D., who came out supporting Warnock's call to euthanize people with dementia.

Link to the Not Dead Yet blog:
http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2008/09/bioethics-blog-defends-warnocks-call.html

On September 19, I reported on this blog that Baroness Warnock(84), a leading ethicist in the UK was suggesting that people with dementia had a duty to die.
Link to my blog entry:
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2008/09/dementia-sufferers-may-have-duty-to-die.html

Many people reacted by thinking these were just a few comments by a demented old woman, but in fact these are mainstream views among the euthanasia lobby who are busy planning for a day where they can obtain the "last-will-pill" or the "peaceful pill" and help mother out-of-her misery.

In case you think that Summer Johnson (pictured above) is possibly another thinker that is part of an extreme fringe, then just look at her bio:

Summer Johnson Ph.D. is the director of the Ethics in Novel Technologies, Research, and Innovation (ENTRI) program of the Alden March Bioethics Institute and a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine. She is also the Director of Graduate Studies at AMBI at Albany Medical School.

Her bio goes on and is very impressive.

Thank you Summer Johnson for proving that Warnock is not alone.

The real question is: What are we going to do about this?

Dementia sufferers may have a 'duty to die'

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Baroness Warnock

Baroness Warnock (84), a veteran UK government advisor and one of Britains leading moral philosophers recently stated in a interview with the Church of Scotland's magazine - Life and Work that:

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the National Health System (NHS) and their families.

Warnock said:

Pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people's lives" because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted that there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

She hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.

The article in the Telegraph stated that:

Recent figures show there are 700,000 people with degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's in Britain. By 2026 experts predict there will be one million dementia sufferers in the country, costing the NHS an estimated 35 billion pounds a year.

The article also stated that:

Last year the Mental Capacity Act came into effect (UK) that gives legal force to "living wills", so patients can appoint an "attorney" to tell doctors when their food and water should be removed.

Warnock also stated that:

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they should be allowed to die."

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty tod Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."

"If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die."

The article quoted Neil Hunt, the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, who said:

"I am shocked and amazed that Baroness Warnock could disregard the value of the lives of people with dementia so callously.

With the right care, a person can have good quality of life very late in to dementia. To suggest that people with dementia shouldn't be entitled to that quality of life or that they should feel that they have some sort of duty to kill themselves is nothing short of barbaric."

The euthanasia lobby has always sold their goals within the framework of suffering, terminally ill people who make a free choice to die. They are a movement that rarely reveal their real goals.

Dr. Philip Nitschke - Australia's Dr. Death, hopes to distribute a "peaceful pill" that would be available to anyone who is tired of living. Nitschke stated several years agon in an interview with the National Review that the "peaceful pill" would be available to troubled teens.

Previous blog entry:
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2008/05/alleged-suicide-job-shocks-campaigners.html

Dying With Dignity in the Netherlands (NVVE) has made it very clear in their newsletters that their final goal is the "last will pill" that could be taken by anyone who is tired of living.

At the World Federation of Right to Die conference in September 2006 in Toronto, Dr. Rob Jonquiére, the CEO of the NVVE stated that the actions of the radical side of the right to die movement was holding politicians back from supporting the "last will pill".

The NVVE is also working on establishing euthanasia as a human right.

A previous blog entry
http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/search/label/Last-will-pill

The next time you are affected by the sales pitch by the euthanasia lobby remember. The end game will be a universal right to die for the competent, a duty to die for the incompetent, and a social pressure on people with disabilities and the elderly to take the "last will/peaceful pill".

The voters in Washington State need to read the comments by Baroness Warnock, Philip Nitscke, the NVVE in the Netherlands and Ludwig Minelli in Switzerland. They need to understand that assisted suicide will not stop with the Initiative 1000 campaign, even Booth Gardner has stated that the I-1000 initiative is only the beginning because voters will not accept more at this time.

Link to the article in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html