Growing queue to die: 800 Britons sign up

[chemical-licker]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...c-Dignitas.html

Growing queue to die: 800 Britons sign up with Swiss suicide clinic as fight to change law is renewed

The number of Britons thinking of travelling to the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland has almost reached 800.

The figure is ten times the level of seven years ago.

It emerged as former Cabinet minister Lord Falconer launched a bid to change the law to end the risk of prosecution for people who help relatives and friends travel abroad to die.

The 800 are people who have taken the first step to ending their lives by becoming members of the controversial clinic.

Thirty-four men and women have already been given a ' provisional green light' to die after being interviewed by a doctor to ensure they are terminally ill but still mentally fit to make such a decision.

One is set to make the trip very soon, while another four have fixed dates for their deaths.

There is massive public support for a change in the law to allow assisted dying, with polls regularly showing more than 80 per cent of the public want it made legal.

Tomorrow, 46-year-old multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy will ask the House of Lords to decide whether her husband Omar will be prosecuted if he helps her travel abroad to die.

As she does so a group of peers, led by two members of Tony Blair's Cabinet, will seek to end the ' inhumane' situation in which relatives or friends risk up to 14 years in jail for helping in such cases.

Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, and Baroness Jay, former leader of the House of Lords and daughter of Labour prime minister James Callaghan, will table an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill. A similar move by former health secretary Patricia Hewitt was defeated in the Commons last month.

The 1961 Suicide Act criminalises anyone who aids, abets, counsels or procures someone else's suicide, and some relatives have been questioned by police.

Baroness Jay said: 'It's a tragic anomaly that people who are giving a last loving assistance to a loved one find themselves under the threat of imprisonment.'

Lesley Close, who went to Dignitas in 2003 with her brother John, a sufferer from motor neurone disease sufferer, said: 'More and more British people will be travelling to Switzerland to die because more people are aware of the compassionate and peaceful death you can achieve there.

'The interest in Dignitas underlines the case for reform of the law. We need the same facility here.'

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns to allow assisted suicide, said: 'There is clearly a growing demand for a well regulated, legal right for people with terminal illness who are mentally competent to end their life if they choose to.'

But Dominica Roberts of the Pro-Life Alliance said: 'The proeuthanasia lobby are using terror tactics. They tell people they have a choice between unbearable pain and assisted suicide, but what we want is better palliative care.

'The danger is that vulnerable people will be pressured into going to Switzerland. The right to die could become a duty to die.'

Dr Peter Saunders, director of Care Not Killing, said, 'If the proeuthanasia lobby really want to legalise assisted suicide let them bring a Private Member's Bill openly rather than try to sneak measures through the back door.'

sad story, I say let them do what they want them to do, not nice letting people carry on in pain especially if their is a way out that is painless.

[preacherman76]

Im torn on this issue. I had a aunt that died from cancer. On her last day, they took her off pain meds to try"pain managment" it was the worst 2 hours of her existance. Her husband begged the doctor to put her back on it even though we all knew it would kill her. We all thanked God when the Doctor hooked the IV back up.

At the same time, I believe that there are some evil eugenic's who would love nothing more than for people to line up to kill themselfs, even if they could possibly be cured. It should be the very last resort.