Assisted dying expert in Bath
The peer who mounted an attempt to legalise assisted dying will speak on the subject in Bath later this month.
The University of Bath is hosting a free public lecture by pro-legalisation campaigner Lord Joffe on Tuesday October 27.
His visit coincides with a poll on the university website - www.bath.ac.uk/news/2009/10/14/joffe/ - on the issue which will close the day before he speaks.
In 2006 Lord Joffe's controversial draft bill on assisted dying for the terminally ill was defeated in the House of Lords. The bill set out to give doctors the right to prescribe drugs that a terminally ill patient in severe pain could use to end their own life.
Assisted dying remains illegal under the Suicide Act but the issue remains a moral maze with the Director of Public Prosecutions recently publishing an interim policy aimed at clarifying his office's legal approach.
A city doctor, Anne Turner, and a Lansdown couple - Peter and Penelope Duff - have travelled to the Swiss Dignitas clinic to end their lives in recent years.
Lord Joffe believes that there is an 'urgent need' to change the law on assisted dying and will argue in his lecture that assisted dying and palliative care are essential and complementary aspects of care for people suffering from painful incurable diseases.
Lord Joffe said: "I support assisted dying because I care about suffering and want the law changed so that those who presently suffer terrible deaths will in future have the option to end their lives at a time and in a manner of their choosing."
South African Lord Joffe, an honorary graduate of the university, was a human rights lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and his ANC colleagues against the death penalty in 1963.
The lecture launches a new series of open events at the university which will address major global issues and challenges.
It will take place at 6.15pm in 8 West 3.22 at the Claverton campus. For a free ticket, email Sheila Willmott or call 01225 386631.
For more information on all public lectures held at the University of Bath, visit http://www.bath.ac.uk/event/public-lectures/
Comments
by Ann Rothwell, Bath
Friday, October 23 2009, 12:24PM
“A friend who had spent some time as an assistant to a vet developed ovarian cancer. In the latter stages of her rather quick demise form this illness, she spoke to me about the fact that ultimately her death would be brought about as a result of being unable to process any food, as her abdomen would be overwhelmed by the cancerous growth. I was with her not long before the end of her life, and she resentfully expressed the view that, had she been a dog, there'd have been a merciful way of avoiding the prolongation of her pitiful condition by having her life brought to an end by use of an injection. We, as a society, need to face up to our double standards on this issue. What are we insisting on prolonging life for? Why do we find it not only tolerable but 'best plan' to give a dog a merciful injection, but not a human, who has the additional problem of being able to view the probable future with dread. Is there any suggestion that a dog experiences anything other than present pain? I think not. But we know that the prospect that faces those who are terminally ill and cognisant of the fact is sometimes even worse than the symptoms of disease themselves.”