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Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill: Select Committee Report

My Lords, I had the honour to serve on the Select Committee. Those pressing to change the law tell us that what they euphemistically call ““assisted dying”” encourages the development of good palliative care. Let us look at that claim. One of the many letters I received during the course of our inquiry was from two consultants, who described a 31 year-old woman, living in Holland, with an advanced cervical cancer. She chose to return home to Newcastle because, she told them, she was being offered euthanasia on every doctor’s ward round, like a treatment option, and had felt pressured to accept the offer. In Newcastle, they dealt with her problems of pain and incontinence, and she was able to spend several weeks with her three-year-old son before dying peacefully from her illness. The evidence that our committee heard in Holland illustrates their lack of specialist palliative care. We heard that 84 per cent of those requesting euthanasia are in pain, and 70 per cent have difficulty breathing—not good palliative care by any standards. One in 32 dies by such means there, not the small numbers of which the noble Lord, Lord Joffe, has spoken. Volume III of our report has evidence from Dutch physician Bert Keizer, who wrote:"““I would rather die in a country where euthanasia is forbidden but where doctors do know how to look after a dying patient in a humane manner than I would in a country where palliative medicine is ignored but euthanasia can be easily arranged””." And increasingly, Dutch doctors feel that economic measures in healthcare will increase the pressures on physicians to provide assistance in dying. But what about Oregon? As In Holland, palliative care in Oregon is not an accredited medical specialty. Last year, the Journal of Palliative Medicine reported that, after seven years of legalised assistance with suicide, palliative care in Oregon for people in the final week of life had actually worsened. Three years ago, another report on end-of-life care in the US found that less than 20 per cent of Oregon hospitals had palliative care programmes, and it gave Oregon a Grade E for end-of-life care. However, we are being told that Oregon is the model to follow, and that the take-up rate of assisted suicide is small. Well, every annual report into the working of the law by the Oregon health department has the caveat:"““Our numbers are based on a reporting system for terminally ill patients who legally receive prescriptions for lethal medications and do not include patients and physicians who may act outside the [law]””." Its annual report data are based entirely on interviews with prescribing physicians. In 1999—two years after the legislation—it candidly admitted that,"““the entire account could have been a cock and bull story. We assume, however, that physicians were their usual careful and accurate selves””." The report ends with an interesting warning:"““Again we remind all our physician readers that prescriptions written under the Death with Dignity Act must be reported””." All this was clarified in a letter I have received in the past few days from the Oregon health department, confirming that,"““there is no central register of prescriptions written by doctors in Oregon””." It goes on to say that the Oregon health department,"““would not be able to detect a prescription written for physician-assisted suicide but not reported to us””." The latest Oregon health department report confirms that the percentage of patients referred to a specialist for psychological evaluation has declined from 31 per cent in 1998 to only 5 per cent now. Yet excluding depression, which occurs in more than one in five such patients, is key to assessing competence. And Oregon’s data indicate ““doctor shopping””. More than two-thirds of patients changed their doctor to get a lethal prescription written, so the doctor writing the prescription knew little about them beyond the case notes. Why do people seek death? Overwhelmingly, people who ask to die are confused, depressed, feel that they are a burden, feel unconnected to the world around them, and are fearful. The great majority of ill people go through this as they grieve for their health and the life they used to have. I have had the honour of caring for many thousands of such patients, but the present law protects them from harming themselves. Even the most determined can have a change of heart. In 1991, a GP referred a young dying man to me, asking for help because the man only wanted euthanasia; he was refusing all care and his GP did not know what to do. With a prognosis of weeks, he was desperate to die, but pain and immobility gradually improved. Ten years later his wife died of pancreatic cancer, leaving him lone parent of their three children. Now he says to me, ““Ilora, don’t go there. I cannot bear to think what would have happened to my kids if I had been able to have euthanasia””. But he fulfilled every criterion of every assisted dying Bill I have ever seen, and there is no doubt that he would have gone ahead with it. Palliative care is advancing rapidly. New drugs are emerging, as are better ways of using the ones we have. Doctors who care day in, day out for dying patients know that, whatever was the case 30 years ago, you no longer need to kill the patient to kill the pain. Let us be crystal clear about what ““assisted dying”” really involves. It is not giving a little more morphine or sedative so the patient can relax and let go of life. No, it is a massive overdose of barbiturates—50 times the therapeutic dose—and, in the case of euthanasia, the Dutch protocol advises an injection of curare to paralyse the patient completely to prevent breathing. Where the overdose is taken by mouth, as in Oregon’s assisted suicides, those who ingest it sometimes do not die for more than 30 hours and a few even wake up again. This is a Rubicon that we must not cross. When I was a newly qualified doctor, I thought that we should allow euthanasia, but now I am certain that even physician-assisted suicide is too dangerous to adopt and that the words of the Hippocratic Oath are as true today as they ever were. They state:"““I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect””"