The Care Not Killing Alliance has warned Parliament, the public and the media not to be misled by a report published on Thursday that it says downplays the risk to vulnerable people posed by the legalisation of euthanasia. The warning comes amidst fears that fresh attempts will shortly be made to legalise the practice in Britain, most likely beginning with Scotland, which is seen as a soft target by pro-euthanasia advocates.
Dr Peter Saunders, Campaign Director of Care Not Killing, warned:
People should be aware that the prominence being given to this new review is part of a deliberate campaign to soften up the British public for the legalisation of euthanasia. In the Netherlands healthcare is covered by insurance, but in the UK most people rely on the State. In a cash-strapped NHS, where hospitals are being closed and elder abuse is on the rise, there is growing prejudice against the chronically ill and disabled who are seen as disproportionate consumers of limited resources. Legalising euthanasia would place vulnerable lives at risk. And the Dutch statistics, when properly examined, actually raise great cause for concern.
We should not be placing before health providers in Britain the temptation to consider euthanasia as a therapeutic option to be used in the patients' "best interests". Once euthanasia is established as a legal "therapy", it will be made the subject of cost/benefit assessment by health managers and economists. And in a cost conscious health service £5 for a lethal injection will be a tempting therapeutic option to £500 per week for effective palliative care.
Care Not Killing has always argued that legalising euthanasia would place pressure, whether real or imagined, on vulnerable people - the lonely, elderly, sick, disabled or depressed - to request early death. These people often already feel themselves to be a financial or emotional burden on relatives, carers or society and this is why they need strong legal protection. The "right" to die, can so easily become a coercive offer, a duty to die. The law should not be changed just because a small number of insistent people wish to have their lives ended by doctors. It would result in a much larger number of vulnerable people being placed at risk.
This fear was borne out by opinion polls published at the time of the defeat of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying Bill in May 2006, which showed that 65 percent of people agreed that if the law changed "vulnerable people could feel under pressure to opt for suicide", 75% of people agreed that "people with treatable illness such as depression might opt prematurely for suicide", 73% said that a change in the law would "make it more difficult to detect rogue doctors such as Dr Harold Shipman" and 82% said that if Dutch laws were adopted here they would be concerned that people would be killed without an explicit request.
