If you are considered a burden by others, you sense it. Like Dr Ashton’s youngish men disheartened not to be the breadwinners, sick old people may well be overwhelmed by a sense of rejection, made worse by physical pain. The supporters of Lord Falconer’s Bill make much of the fact that those handed out the “only six months to live” sentence proposed by the Bill will take the fatal drugs it provides themselves, and by their own choice. But what in the culture will guide that choice? What is the effect on the patient’s free will when a profession whose entire previous raison d’être has been to assist life now stands ready to give you the tools of death?
Once it becomes legal that such a thing could happen, how long before it becomes expected? Most old people in hospital try to conform to what they think the system wants. If it wants them dead, and gives them the power to die, their grim path of duty lies clear. Some will have families who do not care enough whether they live; others will have no families at all. To all of these, Lord Falconer’s “choice” could become as proverbial as Hobson’s.
It does not have to be this way. Think of the revolution in attitudes to the disabled and mentally handicapped that has taken place in the past 40 years.
I live in Switzerland currently, and heard a radio interview of an activist who wanted to further liberalize Switzerland’s notoriously lax assisted-suicide laws. He said that they want to make assisted suicide easier because so few people are making use of it now. He claimed that nursing homes are full of people who would rather be dead. I think he really means that nursing homes are full of people that [b]he[/b] would like to be dead.
There’s a reference here to the 1930’s and Germany which really advanced this concept of “helping people to die,” if I could just think of the guy’s name and he had physicians helping, too …….
Ah, yes : http://www.amazon.com/The-Nazi-Doctors-Psychology-Genocide/dp/0465049052/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1404674070&sr=8-3&keywords=Hitler's+medical+Doctors