Friday 10 July 2009

An Alzheimer’s Follow Up

Hmmm …

I’m going to thank Lady Sybil, over at Addicted to Discworld.

Bless her, she emailed me to let me know about follow reports on something I wrote about, a couple of days ago.

To summarise, writer Terry Pratchett was supporting an assisted suicide amendment to a bill, then going through the House of Lords.


As those of you who know me will possibly realise.

To summarise, though, it seems that Lord Falconer’s amendment hasn’t gone through the House, being defeated on a Free vote, by 194 to 141.

I’m not sure what to make of this.

I’m — on the one hand — fully behind the amendments basic idea; that someone who helps a terminally ill relative to die should not be prosecuted for murder.

On the other?

I know for me that I think it’s not necessarily something I believe I could comfortably go through with, in those shoes; that’s without the equally valid point, voiced by many Doctors and disability campaigners, that laws like this were used by the Nazi’s to kick-start the Holocaust.

It’s a nasty little moral dilemma, isn’t it?

And one I know I’ll be mulling over for many years

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