You may have seen on the news recently the story of Tony Nicklinson from Melksham. In 2005 Mr. Nicklinson suffered a severe stroke which has left him totally paralysed. But he still has all his mental faculties. He can communicate via a computer but otherwise can do nothing for himself. He has now gone to court asking for the court to allow someone else to end his life.
In a recent interview with BBC Wiltshire Mr. Nicklinson said:
I have locked-in syndrome and it makes my life a living nightmare. I cannot speak and I am also paralysed below the neck, which means I need someone to do everything for me. For example, 90% of itches have to be endured because by the time someone comes to scratch it and I have laboriously explained where it is, the itch has gone. Now I just put up with them.
We live in a wonderful age where people (in the developed world anyway) have access to wonderful medical care meaning people are living longer and doctors are able to treat diseases and illnesses that in the past would have meant people dying. But the other side of this is that people are being kept alive through what the medical profession called “heroic measures”. This means “ … a treatment or course of therapy which possesses a high risk of causing further damage to a patient's health, but is undertaken as a last resort with the understanding that any lesser treatment will surely result in failure.”
Interestingly, one of the doctors who treated Mr. Nicklinson for the stroke back in 2005 has said that he would have withheld treatment had he known the long term outcome.
In recent months I have found myself dealing with many people who have been faced with seeing a loved one slowly die, and the tacit question is whether it would be more humane for some kind of assisted suicide. The gut instinct is “Yes”. However, it is not as simple as that. There are many issues associated with this topic not least (from our perspective) what is the Christian stance. And that stance can be summarised as that human life is a God given gift and should not be taken away.
I have found a helpful article by published by the Massachusetts Council of Churches in the USA on the internet http://www.masscouncilofchurches.org/docs/doc_suicide.htm#statement.
The article (although 11 years old) tries to set out Christian thinking. Put simply it says that assisted suicide carried out by a doctor is not desirable but equally neither are “medical heroics”.
The above was the basis of my newsletter to my churches in July. On Friday 17th August the High Court ruled it would be illegal for someone to assist Tony Nicklinson to die. The thrust of the argument seems to be that someone would have to kill Tony Nicklinson and that is murder. The judgment said it was something for Parliament to decide.
Who would be a judge? Who would be a doctor? But who would be Tony Nicklinson?
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