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January 5th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - Report said the right to die should be limited to those who have mental capacity to express their wish
By
Steve Doughty
Last updated at 12:54 AM on 5th January 2012
Sir Terry Pratchett is a prominent backers of assisted suicide
Anyone given 12 months or less to live should have the legal right to ask a doctor to help them kill themselves in as easy and painless a manner as possible, an influential report said yesterday.
It said that to avoid unnecessary suffering, there should be a right to choose to die, but that it should be limited to those who have the mental capacity to express a wish to end their life and have been diagnosed with a terminal illness by two doctors.
Among a string of safeguards, it proposed a minimum two-week period in which the dying man or woman would be given time to change their mind.
Anyone physically unable to take the
prescribed deadly drugs by themselves would be ruled out, to avoid the
potential for abuse of the vulnerable by malevolent relatives or
friends.
The report by the
Commission on Assisted Dying, led by former Labour Lord Chancellor Lord
Falconer, stopped short of recommending euthanasia of the kind practised
by the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.
The
commission was set up in 2010 amid the growing controversy over the
deaths at Dignitas and the erosion of the 50-year-old law on assisted
suicide which sets down a maximum 14-year jail sentence for anyone who
‘aids or abets’ the death of another.
It followed new rules set down by Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, which effectively free people from the threat of criminal charges if they help the suicide of somebody who is desperately ill out of compassion and without thought for their own gain.
But right-to-life groups said the report was fixed in favour of calling for legalised assisted suicide. They pointed out that it was financed by author Sir Terry Pratchett and businessman Bernard Lewis, both prominent backers of assisted suicide.
The report recommended a string of safeguards, it proposed a minimum two-week period in which the dying man or woman would be given time to change their mind
Lord Falconer, who chose the other ten members of the commission, himself led an attempt to bring in an assisted dying Bill in the Lords three years ago.
The 415-page report states: ‘A dying person who met the legal criteria would be able to ask a doctor to prescribe them a dose of medication that would end their life.’
The report set out in detail how a system of assisted dying would work. An individual would have to have been diagnosed by a doctor as having a terminal illness likely to kill them within a year. They would require the capacity to express the choice to die for themselves.
A second doctor would have to approve the first doctor’s diagnosis and both would have to speak to the patient to make sure the decision to die was firm and was not made under pressure from others.
The two-doctor system is similar to the process developed to allow legalised abortion in 1967, and which has been in use as numbers of abortions in England have risen to nearly 200,000 a year.
The report recommended that if either doctor was suspicious, then an independent assessment should be carried out by a nurse, care worker or social worker.
A doctor should collect the poison from a pharmacist and supervise the death. But the patient, the report said, should take the poison him or herself, preferably by mouth. A disabled patient might be allowed to use an automated syringe machine, it added.
The report also said that ‘the provision of high-quality end-of-life care must be a priority for the Government, independent of the issue of assisted dying’.
But Richard Hawkes, of disability charity Scope, said he had ‘little confidence’ in the commission’s ‘over-simple’ safeguards, which he said drew ‘an arbitrary line between people with a terminal illness and people with long-term impairments’. He added: ‘In reality the lines between the two can often be blurred, making this distinction unworkable.’
Dr Peter Saunders of the Care Not Killing campaign group dismissed the commission as a ‘sham’, adding: ‘This investigation was unnecessary, biased and lacking in transparency and its report is seriously flawed.
‘Those with a differing view, including representatives from the major disability rights organisations and doctors’ groups, were not invited to join the commission.’
But Sarah Wootton of Dignity In Dying said: ‘Opponents to a change in the law will continue to attack any efforts to find a solution to the unbearable suffering which continues daily in the absence of a compassionate assisted dying law, but they themselves cannot suggest an alternative.’
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