Story supplied by The Herald - 7 March 2002

BOTH women are 43 years old. Each has an active mind but endures the indignity of a helpless body. Both seek the right to die.

Today one of them, who shall be nameless, may be granted her wish. The other, Diane Pretty, remains trapped by the ravages of motor neurone disease, and the law.

What is the difference between Mrs Pretty, who has spent months going through the courts in fruitless pursuit of her goal, and the lady who video-conferenced her case from a hospital bed yesterday?

It is that Mrs Pretty requires the active connivance of another - probably her husband, who would thereby face a charge of murder - while the lady in the bed asks only that the doctors stop doing that which keeps her alive, in this case sustaining her with a ventilator.

Otherwise, her case is similar to decisions which are taken daily by patients and their doctors up and down the country without the involvement of the law. It has drawn comparisons with the groundbreaking cases of Tony Bland, the Hillsborough disaster victim, and Janet Johnston, the Lanarkshire victim of a drugs overdose who died in 1996.

But both had lingered for years in a persistent vegetative state and the crucial decisions - to withhold artificial nourishment - were taken on their behalf.

Legally and ethically, however, the lady in the bed is no different from the weary cancer patient who calls a halt to rigorous chemotherapy so that he or she can go home to die. It is the comparison with Diane Pretty that yesterday provoked demands for a rethink about how society splits such hairs.

Sheila McLean, professor of medical law and ethics at Glasgow University, suggests that society is making Diane Pretty suffer in order to satisfy our collective qualms about euthanasia.

"We are extremely disingenuous about end-of-life decisions," she said. "The two cases are about exactly the same thing.

"It obviously feels better to be doing it passively, by withdrawing treatment, rather than actively, by giving the patient something which will kill her.

"People make this distinction because they can say they are not legalising euthanasia. We have not been brave enough to confront what this means for someone like Mrs Pretty.

"People with MND know a point will come when they are going to be trapped in their bodies, able to think but unable to move. They will want help in dying, but they are turned down, because it would involve physician-assisted suicide.

"The other woman is in the position where she has treatment she can refuse.

"She will be allowed to die, whereas Diane Pretty is having to fight through the courts. It is an incongruous, not to say cruel, position to put people in.

"This is a political hot potato which politicians have not been keen to grasp. I am not saying we should legalise euthanasia but it is time to get rid of some of the shibboleths and have a proper debate about this issue."

- March 7th

©2002 The Herald

Questions

1. Do patients always have the right to refuse treatment?
2. Can we say that Miss B and Diane Pretty were fighting for the same thing, the right to commit suicide with the help of others?
3. Should Tony Bland’s case be used as a comparison either with Miss B or with Mrs Pretty?
4. Can we call tube-feeding artificial nourishment?
5. Is it right to assume, as Sheila McLean does, that Motor Neuron Disease sufferers will all want to die?
6. What would have been the danger of allowing Mrs Pretty’s husband to kill her?
7. What other options were open to Mrs Pretty to relieve her pain and suffering?

Comments

• Miss B was not refusing treatment by the ventilator, instead she was asking doctors to withdraw the treatment already begun. This would involve doctors actively ending treatment when they knew that to do so would kill her.
• Miss B never stated that she thought being treated with the ventilator was burdensome. Instead, she saw her life as a disabled person as overly burdensome and in fact, worse than death.
• Patients do have a legal right to refuse treatment, but they also have a duty to act ethically and so should not refuse treatment with the intention of ending their own life, this amounts to suicide.
• Tony Bland did not ask to be killed, as Diane Pretty did, Tony’s parents asked for him to be killed. Tony Bland did not ask to have any medical treatment withdrawn, as Miss B did.

June 2002

Copyright © 2002-2008 The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. All Rights Reserved. Tel: 0141 221 2094. E-mail: Web Design & Development by CSS Web Design