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60% at Royal Society of Medicine Debate Oppose Assisted Suicide in Britain
By James Tillman

LONDON, United Kingdom, June 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews) – In a sign that opposition to legalizing assisted suicide may remain relatively strong in Britain, 60% of those in attendance at a public debate sponsored by the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) voted to oppose any relaxation of British law forbidding assisted suicide.

The debate came at the end of a long RSM-sponsored day of speeches both for and against the legalization of assisted suicide in the United Kingdom.

Professor David Jones, Director of the Centre for Bioethics and Emerging Technologies at St. Mary's University College, pointed out that in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide has been effectively legal since 1993, many patients are now killed without their consent.

A study that was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) this year found that nearly half of the nurses who had cared for euthanasia patients had been involved in killing patients without their "explicit request."

His concerns were echoed by Baroness Campbell and by Baroness Nuala O'Loan. Baroness Campbell, chair of the Disability Committee on the British Equality and Human Rights Comission, warned that “disabled people are fearful that when [assisted suicide] becomes an option, it will gain a credibility that will erode the resolve of many people experiencing personal difficulties."

“Not only will it enter our heads, it will also enter the heads of our family and our friends and ultimately I’m afraid those who hold the purse strings."

Baroness O'Loan pointed out that "when the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill bill was debated, more than 100 disabled and terminally ill people protested outside against the bill, for a very simple reason."

"They were afraid."

While it is good news that a majority oppose assisted suicide, it is unfortunate that it is not a sufficient majority that we can feel assured it will last!

I know that in some countries where assisted suicide is allowed, the elderly and disabled either have to hire, or their guardians (if their guardians are of right conscience) people to watch over them so that the doctors will not hasten the ending of their lives due to 'poor quality of life'. Yes, that is right, they actually have to pay people to watch and make sure that too much anesthesia is not given, that sufficient medicine and food and water are maintained, that worse is not done. And when the guardian assigned a disabled person believes that 'poor quality of life' means the person 'wouldn't want to live anymore' because that person can't imagine it, death comes swiftly. When there is no money for such protection.. death comes swiftly. When such protection is insufficient.. death comes swiftly.

The quality of nursing home care itself in general, no matter where you go, and how much you pay, is very low.

And this should not be unexpected, given the morals of society in general -- there is no attachment to the elderly in these homes, of family, and so no bond of love in so many cases, no Christian love of neighbor, or valuing of life in suffering. Medications needed to be proscribed regularly -- often are not proscribed. Basic needs, ignored. The abundance of nursing homes for the elderly itself is an outgrowth of the breakdown of the family, which in the past itself more often had the care of elderly parents itself, and was large, with enough family members, living not divided -- to do so.. 

So.. good news.. bad news.. Let's keep trying to focus on the good! And where we need to go!  :D Towards the good!

This seems to be the case that nursing homes are a symptom of the breakdown in family life.. My dear old gran lived with my parents and was part the family like the rest of us until the last few weeks of her life when she needed hospital care. She was a blessing in our home and as children then we all learned so much from her and received lots of love and grandmotherly correction when needed :)

Our consumer society has bred such a selfishness that even human life has become a commodity and its value sometimes is given no more than that which is given to the likes of a car or the latest household gadget. Something disposable like everything else.

Lord bless our old folks and let us never forget them  :+:

I'm glad to say that this is still the case in India where the elderly are taken care of by the family till the end.  This is because of strong family ties . Even nuclear families have elders living with them.  Of course, one does hear of the stray case of an elderly person sent to a nursing home, but that is an occasion of shock and scandal.

I am so glad about England's support for the sanctity of human life! The ripple effects will reverberate.

Shock and scandal! Deo gratias!  :D