Thursday (22/10/09) Eliot Lecture Theatre 2, 6PM: This House Would legalise assisted suicide.
A big thank you to everyone that attended this event and congratulations to the opposition for successfully defending the status quo.
This week’s debate is a fascinating but complicated one. There is a lot of confusion about terms such as assisted dying and euthanasia, their understanding is essential to getting the most out of this great opportunity to hear two experts argue it out.
People are often surprised to know that a certain degree of euthansia already takes place in the UK. Euthanasia refers to the deliberate killing of someone for their own benefit. This incorporates, for example, the act of switching off a life support machine or following a Do Not Resuscitate request on a patient’s medical notes. In the UK acts such as this take place all the time and the opposition to such practises is not so vociferous. It is when Assisted Suicide (one form of euthanasia) is mentioned that things start to get a bit more heated. Whereas the previous examples focus on death caused by preagreed inaction or the extreme situations involving vegetative states, assisted suicide tends to refer to situations where the person can often be capable of living for years onwards but for various reasons wants to end their life before they reach these later years.
The current legal stance on assisted suicide has been modified following Debbie Purdy’s successful appeal to the House of Lords. The DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) has confirmed that citizens who accompany loved ones to countries like Switzerland where assisted suicide is legalised will not be prosecuted on their return to the UK provided there are compassionate grounds for this action. This is the position that Robin Gill will be arguing for at the debate, the status quo.
Arguably, the major problem with the status quo is that it denies citizens the ability to die in the surroundings of their home, among loved ones. It also makes it difficult for those in the latter stages of degenerative diseases (an aspect central to the Debby Purdy case) to be able to make this journey to the continent and could lead to people having to take their lives earlier than they would if they could do so in the UK. The major issue that counterbalances this is the fear of vulnerable people (particularly the elderly) being pressurised into killing themselves by greedy/selfish relatives. How true this caricature is will be for the speakers to decide.
A few links to help you with any research:
http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=55 a summary of the issues
http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/ the official website of the pro-assisted suicide lobby group Dignity in Dying, kind providers of the proposition speaker of this debate.
http://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/ the official website of the leading anti-assisted suicide lobby group Care not Killing
Thanks to everyone who turned up to our open debate this Wednesday with Julian Brazier MP, Owen Lyne (UCU) and Usman Ali (NUS) on the topic of funding for higher education. We heard strong arguments from all three panellists, and the MP for Canterbury and Whitstable used the opportunity to announce that he is not in favour of a rise in tuition fees. A high turnout and questions from an engaged audience made for a successful evening, and we hope to run similar events in the near future.
