Assisted suicide plans 'naive'
The Courier
Elderly
parents could be encouraged to kill themselves by their children to
prevent costly care bills eating into their inheritance if assisted
suicide is legalised, MSPs have been warned.
Proposals
to allow sick people - including teenagers as young as 16 and elderly
people - to seek help to end their own lives have been attacked by
palliative care experts and religious groups.
The
Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill is "dangerously naive" and so vague it
could legalise assisted suicide by loaded gun, experts said in
submissions to Holyrood's Health Committee.
Dr
Stephen Hutchison, consultant physician in palliative medicine at the
Highland Hospice in Inverness, said: "In the UK, elder abuse affects
over half a million people, with the perpetrators commonly being friends
or family.
"In
the face of chronic illness and dependence, and the prospect of
expensive care eroding the family's inheritance, the availability of
assisted suicide could create further risk to the frail and elderly and
expose them to unhealthy societal and internal pressures."
International
evidence suggests the legalisation of assisted suicide could be the
start of a "slippery slope" to a wider acceptance of suicide for
non-life limiting conditions, he added.
He
said: "The relaxation of criteria and disregard for the law as seen
elsewhere is almost certain to be replicated here if assisted suicide
was to be legalised. To argue otherwise is dangerously naive."
In
Belgium, a transsexual was euthanised following a failed sex change,
deaf twins ended their lives because they feared going blind, while a
women with depression and another woman with anorexia died by
euthanasia, he said.
An
elderly Italian lady received assisted suicide in Switzerland "because
she was distressed about losing her looks", and another sought death
"because she felt unable to adjust to the modern world", he said.
One
doctor in Oregon "encouraged a sick man to have assisted suicide, much
to the alarm of his wife" but he went on to live a further five years,
he said.
Professor
Marie Fallon and Dr David Jeffrey said the Bill "represents a paradigm
shift in medical ethics which will have a damaging effect on the
doctor-patient relationship".
They
said: "The Bill is alarmingly vague as to the means of suicide. As it
stands, could it include supplying the patient with a loaded gun?"
The
Muslim Council of Scotland said: "Evidence shows that wherever assisted
suicide is legalised, it inevitably leads to increasingly more people
becoming eligible to end their lives prematurely, the recent example of
Belgium's extension of euthanasia to children confirming that in this
area the slippery slope is real."
The
Children's Hospice Association said: "For neuro-developmental reasons,
young people up to the age of about 25 years old do not fully associate
their own death with permanent erasure from existence.
"This
is extremely important because it means a young person might ask for
assisted suicide for reasons that have nothing to do with an actual
desire to die in the sense that death is understood by older adults."
The experts will give evidence to the Health Committee on Tuesday.y PRESS ASSOCIATION, 23 January 2015 6.46pm. Updated: 24 January 2015 12:13pm.
