Anne, 89, Needed Help, Not Dignitas
Readers, speaking as a disabled person who has never supported, and will never support, assisted suicide, this story scares me. Deeply.
IN a week of disturbing stories right across the news gauntlet – Peaches, Pistorius, the political car-crash of Maria Miller – one dark and troubling tale went almost unnoticed.
Published: Sat, April 12, 2014
The truly disturbing nature of Anne’s story is this: she was not suffering from any form of terminal disease. True, at 89, she had had her health problems – diseases of the lung and heart, requiring spells in hospital (which she hated). But she wasn’t dying of cancer, or one of the nasties such as Huntington’s Chorea, or multiple organ failure.
Anne simply felt alienated from the modern world. Speaking days before she died – from a lethal dose of drugs provided by the clinic – she said she felt she faced a choice either to “adapt or die”, and announced she was not prepared to adapt to a world in which technology took precedence over humanity. She added that she had become frustrated with the trappings of modern life, such as fast-food, consumerism, and the amount of time people spend watching television.
“They say ‘adapt or die,’” she said, having already made the decision to take the latter option by drinking a deadly dose of barbiturates. “I find myself swimming against the current, and you can’t do that. If you can’t join them, get off… all the old fashioned ways of doing things have gone.”
Is that a condition Dignitas should be giving itself permission to treat with a lethal cocktail of drugs? I don’t think so. Its own rules state that it will only provide help in cases of “illness which will lead inevitably to death, unendurable pain or an unendurable disability”.
Anne’s niece, Linda, 54, accompanied her aunt to Zurich and was by her side when she died. She has said she “cannot think of a better death”.
Hmm. I don’t doubt her personal belief in that statement and I am sure she genuinely believes she did the right thing by her aunt. But Anne’s death raises disturbing questions. What if she’d been 10 years younger, say, 79, but held exactly the same bleak view of the world? Would she still have been offered assisted suicide?
Or what about 69? Or 59? At exactly what point does the combination of (undiagnosed) depression plus advancing years get the thumbs-up from the Dignitas doctors?
Personally I have always supported the principle of assisted suicide but Anne’s exit from this world has made me seriously wonder if it can ever be properly controlled.
This disturbing story could be the thin end of a very unpleasant wedge.
Same Difference 
there comes a point in life where you feel your just going round in circles and with the likes of politicians making life so difficult for many groups of people it’s no wonder people just wont to get of the marry go round. it is indeed very tragic that this is the case and this lady felt the need to end her life but many do and through suicide and the way things are at this time things can only get worse sad to say
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Where was the help of the family to see to it that Ann was made comfortable in similar company? Or to have arrange something for her? Niece either too busy watching television or on computer, or texting, or a hundred and one other useless things, rather than caring about another human being.
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Many older people lead isolated lives they don’t have the likes of myself around them a good neighbour nothing more all they see is a country engulfed in self greed and a government on the make and take and for older generation it’s very unsettling so they tell me
i for the record happen to agree if i were fit i certainly wouden’t live in the UK
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Care not killing is what we should be fighting for. Anne obviously needed help and support, but no doubt felt a burden on her family. Life can get difficult and it is easy to get down, especially when barriers to partaking in normal activities seem to be multiplying which happens to many disabled and older people with no terminal illness.
Dignitas is a business, and allowing people to finish their lives for what ever reason increases their income. Anne is not the first they have helped without a terminal illness, including much younger disabled clients.
A change in the law to permit assisted suicide for those with terminal illness of sound mind is the start of a slippery slope open to much interpretation. Some people will start playing god over who lives and make many feel a burden.
We need to take the fear of dying a slow painful death away. This can only be done by the increased provision of good palliative care where ever you live with choices where this is provided, home or hospice. This currently does not happen, this is what a change in law should guarantee.
Better care and support is needed for those with long term conditions to show how life can be done differently and so they do not feel they are a burden. It is very easy to become depressed and think life is not worth living when more and more barriers are put in your way, such as pedestrianisation making town and city centres impossible for those with limited mobility. Train stations who stop any reasonable means of using them for those with reduced mobility or sight, but promote facilities for fit people. Councils who take away subsidised buses, which leave many older people completely housebound, etc etc.
A Government minister yesterday stated they would take action against football stadiums that do not provide adequate facilities for disabled supporters, yet they hand out grants to train stations that limit access to disabled passengers even more. The DWP can not even make its local Job Centres and medical assessment centres that it rented to ATOS accessible, and try to send many disabled claimants on impossible long train and bus journeys to ones in other cities.
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Totally agree and what is more the values of some older generationss do not fit with the present. When you have values instilled and look at this present world, disgust does not even sum it up. Vile almost sums it up, and each day brings more and more wickedness into society. It is very, very seldom that you say manners being displayed, just discourtiousness, foul mouths.
You make a good point about families. There has always been, in some families, a looking to inherit parents goods, even houses, waiting for parents to pass on, and in some cases arguments arise as to who is getting what.
Now if an Act of parliament were to defy natural humanity, on the basis that it is good for business, sold to us on humatarian lines, then families would pressure vulnerable family members to go to the local business park to get injecked, whilst the tills at the Treasury ring out, and more and more licenses to murder people are sold.
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i’m sorry but I disagree. Anne made her choice and it was her right to do so. It is not up to anybody to question her choices which she appears to have made in full capacity.Not everybody wants or needs care.
“We need to take the fear of dying a slow painful death away.” why? Why would you want to force people to live according to your beliefs?
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Anne may be was able to choose and no doubt freely paid Dignitas herself. That does not make it right to change the law in the UK. Why the publicity by her niece? If the modern world was her problem, then there is something wrong. All generations should be able to cope. Currently the reason most people give for wanting the law changed is to do with fear of extreme pain, freely available good palliative care should take away the fear, but nobody is likely to force you! Changing the law to allow assisted suicide would not improve the availability of good palliative care. Nobody is stopping you committing suicide by yourself if that is what you want.
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You know something, there is a generation gap. The niece seeks publicity, have her three minutes of fame, whilst not really caring about Anne, the niece just another shallow product of the age we live in. If the niece were a true human being she would have made certain that the frail woman was associating with like-minded people. You cannot always deal with moral and ethics of one generation meeting the social ethics of another on your own. I am a million miles away from this generation and understand Anne, but strong enough to hold my distain of this present world, to myself. To murder oneself by using others as a means is wicked. I get tired of hearing people saying that parliament should allow others to murder us. There are plenty of mountains and bridges to jump. Let the publicity seeking, self-possed, jump off a mountain, and leave us alone.
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The new generation that has no true substance and values, will approve of murder by other hands.
The true value of life is not understood by this generation that has no real values, their values transient, life cheap. They hear that thousands upon thousands of human beings have been murdered abroad by western and US governments, and to them it is just a number.
As we did not give life to ourselves we have no right to steal it away. Life is precious, except where governments are concerned. If Dignatas is approved in this country, which eventually it will be, on the hidden grounds that it is profitable for government, raises revenues, murder in clinics profitable, whilst having the added advantage of freeing up the NHS, so saving money for the NHS, which NHS can then go and waste on some other petty project.
If a person desires to do away with themselves there are plenty of mountains, bridges and waters to do so. We dare not give governments excuse to murder its own people, after a mass form, it already is doing that
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yet taking your life is wrong its just another nail in the coffin given governments who will use this to rid itself of those who cost to much how much farther down this road we travel death will come soon enough but taking ones own then its against that whot should be life yet am afraid that it will be used against many it cant be that far off were they just like the Nazi party sais go into that room yep when life given up cheaply then theyl use it against you
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Self-murder can never be right or justified. It is wicked to take ones life in such a purposeful way because we have no right to cut off what does not belong to us, but was given to us to cherish.
Our beloved government will put “robust measures in place”, and if those “robust measures” fail, then “lessons will be learned” and when the “lessons” fail, then it will be back to learning more “lessons”, and so on, and so forth. Only children need “lessons”, which says something about our childish parliament tha is not averse to murdering its own people and those of other countries.
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I am just a few years from retirement and have the same mindset as Anne, have old morals and ethics and slow pace, and quality of life instilled within. When I look at what is all around it thoroughly disgusts me, makes me so angry, especially the lack of intelligance, multitudes having opinions, few having the facts. People love to speak their opinion, which they have no right to do, though they believe they have. Opinions do not count a fig. Facts should be ascertained and spoken, otherwise not worth opening one’s mouth.
People are lazy and addicted to consumerism and their own voice. The old ways have gone, and how many goons sit in front of the goggle box being brainwashed into thinking in a different way than is normal for human beings. Now should I go to Dignitas? That is giving in to the system that is so thoroughly obnoxious. Anne, where was her family to guide her into the company of like-minded individuals so that she could have found comfort, as their is a great deal of comfort being with like-minded people.
Our position remains the best, most honest, truthful, understanding that there is because when you have been brought up with substance and clear understanding of things, and the value of things, you have a guide to judge things by.
This present generation will probably not reach 40, or 50 because that which is shallow has no lasting indurance, unlike those of us of a latter generation. Dignatas is murder and the thin end of the wedge for the next generation to be taken out, wholesale
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Can we just remember that the number of people who have gone to Dignitas to die is a tiny proportion of the number of deaths. So it’s hardly ‘the thin edge of the wedge…’ the woman chose to go.
I have worked in end of life care for many years (mainly cancer care – but also dementia, HIV related illnesses and COPD etc.) – like many who work in palliative care, I do not want to see a change in the law in the UK to bring in assisted suicide. Partly because I don’t think doctors should be put in the position of ending someone’s life and partly because the law is fine as it is – passive euthanasia takes place and the law allows this. What gets me about many of the cases that have been high profile, is that ‘death’ has become a consumer product. People want their death to be pre-packed and ready to wear.
Yet many people can chose to die if they want – at 89 with heart and lung problems, just stop taking the medications that are probably keeping you alive… Our problem is that we are asking the wrong question: we shouldn’t be asking who has the right to end life, but who has the right to extend life! One of the campaigners to have her life ended, actually could have died on several occasions, she had MS and had had several severe chest infections that could have carried her off. But no, she always chose to go into hospital and to be treated with antibiotics. What she wanted was to be master of death and have death when she wanted it, in a manner she wanted. Well few of us get that privilege. So in some ways her ‘fight’ for assisted suicide was a bit of a farce – she clearly didn’t want to die, per se, but wanted a specific death – designer death…
In this particular case, Ann the 89 year old, I think it is rather fishy. Just being unhappy is not a reason to end your life. But I write from the comfort of my study, in good health, in active middle-age. I might think differently in 40 years time, if I found myself alone in the world.
See: http://bornagainagnostoc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-little-knowledge-is-dangerous.html for my thoughts on related subjects…
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