Irwin promotes assisted suicide by promoting his suicide.

No assisted suicide.
No assisted elder abuse.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Michael Irwin (86), an assisted suicide lobby activist and retired physician in the UK decided to end his life in order to promote the legalization of assisted suicide in the UK. 

As sad as it is that Irwin is promoting assisted suicide through his own death, the reality is that the attitude and language that Irwin uses concerning his own life mirrors the attitude of the assisted suicide lobby towards the lives of others.

Irwin refers to himself as "existing beyond my sell-by date" and that he doesn't want his friends or family to remember him as "an increasingly decrepit person."

By using this terminology Irwin is degrading people who are elderly (beyond their sell-by date) or living with disabilities (increasingly decrepit).

Liz Carr

Liz Carr, a disability rights activist and actress in the UK, last year stated in an interview why she opposes assisted suicide and why she produced a musical on the topic. Carr states:

“Until we value ill, older and disabled people as equals; until there are no more hate crimes; until their deaths or murders are no longer portrayed or perceived as mercy killing, and until there’s real equality and validity for those groups of people, then maybe we can have that conversation.”

Carr later states in the interview:

“The problem with disability is social oppression, not disability. The solution to that is not to kill a person; it’s not to give them easy access to end their life. It’s to look at the reasons why that person wants to end their life. And are we doing everything we can? 

Irwin, who is a past-president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies and has promoted old-age suicide since 2009, was "struck-off" the list of physicians in 2005 for breaking the code of ethics.

Irwin's personal campaign to legalize assisted suicide devalues the lives of people with disabilities and older people. Irwin is promoting his own death in a manner that devalues the lives of other people creating a new pressure to die.

Swiss Assisted Suicide to Save the Planet.

Wesley Smith published the following commentary on his blog on April 6, 2014.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

Assisted suicide is not about terminal illness.

Assisted suicide is not about disability.

Assisted suicide is not about mental illness.

Assisted suicide is about suicide!

All pretense otherwise was stripped off the movement as the Daily Mail reports that a healthy elderly woman flew to Switzerland to be made dead because she couldn’t handle how high tech has impacted society and, apparently, to save the planet. From the story:

A retired art teacher has ended her life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland after becoming increasingly disillusioned with modern life. In an interview before her death, the 89-year-old environmentalist, from Sussex, said she felt technology had taken the humanity out of social interaction. 

Anne, who asked to be referred to only by her first name, also said she was worried about the damage being inflicted on the planet through overcrowding and pollution.

Assisted Suicide arrest in the UK reminds us of why assisted suicide is prohibited.

This article was written by Dr Peter Saunders the campaign director for the Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK and published on his blog.

Peter Saunders

By Dr. Peter Saunders,

A 65-year-old woman and her son from the Chichester area have been arrested after police suspected they were planning to take her husband to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to commit suicide, sources said.

The pensioner and the 25-year-old were held on suspicion of encouraging or assisting a suicide.

Details about the condition of the 71-year-old man have not been disclosed and none of the family have been named by Sussex Police.

But the force confirmed that officers were having the mental capacity of the ‘vulnerable’ man assessed to determine how able he is to make decisions for himself.

There have been suggestions that the man was in the early stages of dementia, something which - according to Dignitas’ own guidelines - would require an assessment by a psychiatrist of the patient’s mental capacity to make the decision to end their life and has led to the pair’s motives being questioned. There has only been one previous case of a British person with dementia travelling to Switzerland to end their life, in May 2013.

Both the woman and her son have been freed on police bail until October 8 following their arrest on August 8.

It is an offence to encourage or assist suicide under the Suicide Act 1961 (as amended by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009) with the offence carrying a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

However prosecutions can only proceed on the authority of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who has to decide, on the basis of a police investigation, whether there is enough evidence to bring a successful prosecution and whether it is in the public interest to proceed.

In order to decide on the latter the DPP brings his 22 prosecution criteria into play. These were established in 2010 following a public consultation in the wake of the Debbie Purdy case.

In practice, when assistance of a suicide is judged to be ‘wholly motivated by compassion’ a prosecution is unlikely. He decision in this particular case will depend on how he weighs up the facts against his prosecution criteria.

A number of public figures – including euthanasia campaigner Michael Irwin, and novelist Terry Pratchett – have controversially spoken in support for a change in law to allow those with early dementia to kill themselves.

Lethal Injection

This latest case may fuel further calls for a change in the law so it is worth reminding ourselves why the law is as it is and why it does not need changing.

Euthanasia (being killed by a doctor) and assisted suicide (being helped to kill oneself) are illegal for good reason.

The first duty of Parliament is to protect its citizens and British parliaments have rejected decriminalisation three times since 2006 by large majorities on public safety grounds – in the House of Lords in 2006 and 2009 (by 148-100 and 194-141 respectively) and in the Scottish Parliament in 2010 (by 85-16).

The vast majority of UK doctors remain opposed to legalisation along with the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatric Society.

Similarly all major disability rights groups in Britain have resisted any change in the law believing it will lead to increased discrimination towards them and increased pressure ‘to seek help to die’.

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia would place subtle pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives, for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. Those who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed would be particularly at risk. The right to die, in other words, can so easily become the duty to die.

Elder abuse and neglect by families, carers and institutions is real and dangerous and a law allowing the active ending of life in limited circumstances could be so easily exploited and abused. This is why strong laws are necessary.

Developments overseas are disturbing. Assisted suicides have increased by 700% in Switzerland in the last fifteen years and in the Netherlands the number of euthanasia cases has almost doubled since 2006 from 1,923 to 3,695 with increases of 15-20% each year.

In the Netherlands one in eight deaths is due to ‘deep continuous sedation’, dementia patients are euthanised, mobile euthanasia clinics operate and the ‘Groningen protocol’ allows euthanasia for disabled babies.  In Belgium organs are harvested from euthanasia patients and 32% of all euthanasia deaths are ‘without consent’.

Once a ‘right’ to assisted suicide or euthanasia is established for restricted groups there will be inevitable incremental extension to others through the application of case law in ‘hard cases’.

Our current law with its blanket ban does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to those who stand to gain from another person’s death. It also gives discretion to prosecutors and judges to apply mercy in genuinely hard cases.

It also works. The number of Britons travelling abroad to commit assisted suicide has been very small (about 200 in ten years). But according to a House of Lords enquiry, with an ‘Oregon’ law we would have 1,200 deaths a year and with a ‘Dutch’ law 13,000.

Persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for. Our priority must be to make good care – killing pain without killing the patient - accessible to all. This is the best way of safeguarding vulnerable people and addressing patients’ physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs. 

The UK police should be investigating the psychiatrist that Michael Irwin is protecting.

This article is written by Dr. Peter Saunders, the campaign director for the Care Not Killing Alliance in the UK. It was originally published on his blog.

By Peter Saunders - May 30, 2013

Michael Irwin

Peter Saunders

The papers are full of a report (initially carried by the Daily Mirror) about the first British man with dementia to have an assisted suicide at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Zurich, Switzerland.

The BBC is now running the story giving it even wider coverage but it has also been reported by the: Telegraph,  Independent and Daily Mail. I have personally been asked to comment by the BBC, Mirror, Times(£) and Telegraph.

This story (on which I originally commented in March) is in the news because Michael Irwin, who heads up the campaign group SOARS (Society for Old Age Rational Suicide),  gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Mirror reporting that an 83 year old man with early dementia had killed himself at Dignitas seven weeks ago. The Mirror then splashed it on their front page. Now other news outlets are playing catch up in the usual feeding frenzy.

Irwin claims to have ‘helped’ the (unnamed) man in question by referring him to a London psychiatrist (currently also unnamed) who provided him with a medical certificate to say that he was mentally competent enough to make an informed decision about being helped to kill himself.

Irwin believes that assisted suicide should be available to elderly people on demand and seems determined to make himself a martyr for the pro-euthanasia cause by progressively pushing the legal boundaries so this case was very helpful to his cause.

According to the Daily Mirror he now claims to have helped at least 25 people to die at Dignitas.

In 2005 the General Medical Council found him guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck him off the medical register after he admitted supplying sleeping pills to help a friend die although you will seldom see this reported.

Ever since, ironically and curiously, he seems to have escaped prosecution by virtue of the fact that he is no longer a registered medical practitioner. This is in spite of the fact that encouraging or assisting a suicide remains a crime carrying up to a 14 year prison sentence under the Suicide Act 1961.

This is because the Director of Public Prosecutions has decided that he hasn’t yet fulfilled his prosecution criteria. The problem this has created is that Irwin will go on annexing the Sudetenland until he provokes a reaction from the DPP or police because he sees that any reaction will give even more publicity to his cause.

However there is now a new twist to the tale. In deliberately concealing the identity of the London psychiatrist who issued the certificate of mental capacity to this patient Irwin may well now be obstructing the course of justice.

The Director of Public Prosecutions makes it clear that doctors acting in a professional capacity to assist a suicide are likely to be prosecuted and the General Medical Council (GMC) has warned that such doctors risk censure, including being struck off the medical register (see details of DPP and GMC guidelines here). 

That would seem to place the unnamed psychiatrist at risk of both being prosecuted and also losing his licence to practice.

So at very least it would seem that this case should be fully investigated by the police and the GMC.

However on past form I would expect that Irwin will make it extremely difficult for them. He has cleverly, with the media’s full cooperation, created an unsolved mystery that will run and run and ensure that he himself stays in the media spotlight.

The reason for this is that Irwin is actually a campaigner who craves publicity. So he will talk to the media when it suits him but will also withhold incriminating information when it best suits his cause. 

He is playing ‘catch me if you can’.

I suspect he would quite like to be prosecuted to give his cause even more of the oxygen of publicity and will continue to push the envelope more and more until he elicits a response.

Those selling newspapers are of course only too happy to oblige but in the process they risk fuelling more anxiety and suicide contagion amongst the worried well.

What we learn from Irwin is that pro-euthanasia campaigners will always push the boundaries. This is because once you accept the argument that there is such a thing as a life not worth living it is not possible to draft a law to encompass all who would like to fall within its remit without eventually opening it up to everyone.

The minute assisted suicide is allowed for anyone at all others will come using the same arguments of  compassion and autonomy with allegedly equally deserving cases that fall just outside the existing legal boundaries. And they will claim that in the interests of equality they should have access to it too.

And so we see in any jurisdiction where euthanasia or assisted suicide has been legalised that incremental extension steadily takes place (eg Oregon, Belgium, Netherlands).

First there is a year by year increase in numbers and then, accompanying this, a widening of the categories of people to be included.

First we have mentally competent, adults with less than six months to live (as Dignity in Dying and Lord Falconer are pushing for here). Then there are those who are ‘suffering unbearably’ (in mind or body) but not terminally ill; then minors who are judged capable of making up their own minds; then the mentally incompetent who ‘would have wanted it’ had they been able to say.

Irwin wants assisted suicide to be available not just for those who have early dementia, but for any elderly people who feel that their time has come.

The problem is that one cannot grant the legal right to assisted suicide to any group without at the same time removing legal protection from other similar people.

If the law ever were to change in this country vulnerable people would feel constrained to end their lives for fear of being a burden upon loved ones. Or alternatively loved ones would feel constrained to help their determined elderly relatives.  

This pressure would be felt with real intensity at this time of economic recession when many families are struggling to make ends meet.

Given the number of people and organisations who stand to gain financially from the deaths of elderly people it would be a certain recipe for personal and institutional elder abuse.

People with dementia and their families need the best possible care and support, not campaigns for the removal of their legal protection.

Our current law provides the right balance. On the one hand the penalties it holds in reserve act as a powerful deterrent to exploitation and abuse. On the other hand it gives discretion to prosecutors and judges in dealing with hard cases. It does not need changing.

The odd thing about this whole drama is why this 83 year old man, given his obvious mental capability, did not simply take his own life without requiring assistance.

But then, had he done that, it would not have been an international news story and would not have helped Michael Irwin’s campaign.

Assisted Suicide lobby leader calls for assisted suicide for those who are not terminally ill

We are told by the assisted suicide lobby that they are only interested in legalizing the direct and intentional involvement in the death of others when they are terminally ill and suffering. The fact is that the assisted suicide lobby has never limited its goals to death for terminally ill people.

Society should never allow people to urge, assist or counsel others to commit suicide.

The suggestion that assisted suicide would only be available to people who are terminally ill is a selling point and not an actual goal of the assisted suicide lobby. They know that society needs to become accustomed to intentionally killing vulnerable, terminally ill people before they will accept the idea that anyone should be killed by euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Further proof of the concept that terminal illness is not a pre-condition for the assisted suicide lobby was reported in an article that was written by Martin Beckwith and published today in the UK Telegraph.

Dr. Michael Irwin, known in the UK as "Dr. Death" was reported to have started a new group dedicated to legalizing assisted suicide for people who are older but not terminally ill.

The article states:

The Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS), led by a former GP known as “Dr Death”, says that pensioners should have the human right to declare “enough is enough” and die with dignity.

Dr Michael Irwin says he knows of an elderly English woman who is considering taking her life through Dignitas, the Swiss “suicide clinic”, as she is suffering from progressive arthritis and worsening eyesight.

The new group has commissioned a national poll that found 67 per cent of those questioned agreed that very elderly and mentally competent individuals should be allowed to receive a doctor's assistance to die, if they are suffering from health problems but not terminally ill. Only 19 per cent of the 1,009 adults questioned by ICM said they opposed the move while the rest were uncertain.

I wonder what question was asked in the poll?

Maybe they asked - If you are ancient, but mentally competent and if you are suffering uncontrolled and excruciating pain, should you be given "aid in dying"?

Possibly they asked - If you become a suffering useless eater, and you are expensive for the national pension plan, would you rather be dead?

The article then states:

SOARS, wants to legalise assisted suicide with the help of a doctor for those who are merely tired of life because of their age and health problems rather than a terminal disease.

Its hope is that a future law would allow two doctors and a legal witness to agree that the patient was mentally competent and not being pressured to die by relatives, then for the elderly person to be provided with the “necessary medication” after a two-month cooling-off period.

The article quotes the groups website which states:

“Besides those who are terminally ill (which, in today’s medical-legal terms, means someone who is expected to die within six months), there are many very elderly, competent individuals who, experiencing increasing physical and psychological suffering, get to the last years of their natural lives and have to seriously consider whether departing this existence will be much more attractive than struggling on."

The Telegraph article then quotes Irwin:

“Since March, I have been meeting a very elderly lady, who is suffering from progressive arthritis and increasing blindness, who is thinking seriously of going to Switzerland for a doctor-assisted suicide. She has become a member of Dignitas.”

The article concludes this way:

The new campaign will be fiercely resisted by religious groups and charities representing elderly and disabled people, who fear a right to die will be seen by many as a duty to die.

They believe any suggestion that society agrees some people’s lives are not worth living will be taken by the vulnerable as a sign that they should kill themselves to relieve the burden on carers.

As much as I recognize that the assisted suicide lobby has never limited its long-term goals to legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia for the terminally ill, the fact is that Irwin is helping the assisted suicide lobby achieve its first goals.

Irwin appears to be taking a radical position. Society will therefore view the demands of the assisted suicide lobby as being more moderate and therefore supportable.

The fact is that Irwin is not more radical, he is simply expressing what the assisted suicide lobby believes and he is unwilling to follow the politically correct game-plan of the Dying in Dignity, which is the largest group in the assisted suicide lobby in the UK.

What will it take for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) actually to prosecute someone for assisted suicide?

Peter Saunders, the director of the Care NOT Killing Alliance in the UK is wondering what it will take for the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute someone for assisted suicide? Last year, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, released new prosecution guidelines. The Care NOT Killing Alliance would like to see the wording in the Prosecution Guidelines tightened in order to protect vulnerable people from assisted suicide.

I have reprinted his blog:
What will it take for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) actually to prosecute someone for assisted suicide?

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, whose job it is to prosecute people who break the law, announced last Friday that he did not consider it to be in the public interest to bring a case against former GP Michael Irwin, for assisting the suicide of pancreatic cancer sufferer Ray Cutkelvin in 2006.

It was not that he lacked evidence to do so. Irwin had literally begged the DPP to put him away so that he could become a martyr for the pro-euthanasia movement. He had even provided documentary evidence of his involvement in terms of a £1,500 payment towards paying for Cutkelvin's visit to the Dignitas Suicide facility in Zurich.

In fact, Irwin, previously chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now euphemistically rebranded Dignity in Dying) has helped no less than nine people kill themselves, and had even been struck off by the General Medical Council in 2005 for a past attempt.

But nonetheless, the DPP judged that although he had clearly done the deed, it was not in the public interest to make him stand trial.

His justification for this was that Irwin’s case did not fulfil enough of the 22 ‘prosecution criteria’ that he had made public at the request of the Supreme Court ruling on the case of Debbie Purdy last July.

Assisted suicide remains illegal in Britain and still carries a custodial sentence of up to 14 years for convicted offenders. But of over 130 British citizens who have so far travelled to Switzerland to be helped to kill themselves, none have even been tried, let alone convicted.

And the three most recent cases (Downes, Bateman and Rees) have all been let off on the grounds that they were ‘wholly motivated by compassion’ – a mitigating factor seemingly open to liberal interpretation and not easily testable in court (especially given that the key witness in all cases is dead and unable to give evidence).

It appears a pattern is emerging. The police seem reluctant to investigate. The DPP looks to be unwilling to prosecute. Juries are reticent to convict and judges, for those very few cases that do reach this stage, are giving light sentences.

This sort of ‘legal sanction’ is exactly what first happened in the Netherlands and led eventually to an eventual change in the law in that country - legalisation by stealth.

Holland now reports over 1,000 cases of involuntary euthanasia a year, an annual increase in cases of voluntary euthanasia and dozens of disabled children being ‘put down’ under the so-called Groningen protocol.

No wonder that disability rights leaders in this country have just launched a Resistance Campaign asking MPs to sign a charter supporting better care and services for elderly and disabled people and no change in the law.

So far Parliament has stood firm, as have professional groups like the British Medical Association, believing that any change in the law would be a threat to public safety.

One wonders however what it will take for the DPP, the very person appointed to uphold the law, actually to prosecute someone. If he wants the current law to act as an effective deterrent against abuse he will at some point have to be willing to show some teeth.

But the impression he has given with this latest judgement, is that any would-be assisters may go at least as far as Dr Irwin has thus far, without any fear of legal repercussion.

Link to Peter Saunders blog: http://pjsaunders.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-will-it-take-for-director-of.html

Link to my previous blog comment on the Prosecution Guidelines in the UK: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2010/02/assisted-suicide-guidelines-in-uk-are.html