When Jamie Ross was just 19, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. His response? A darkly humorous blog describing the tribulations and indignities faced by a young man with a serious illness
Yesterday, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, Sir Alasdair Fraser, issued his interim guidance on prosecuting cases of assisted suicide and urged the people of Northern Ireland to respond to a 12-week consultation on public interest factors in favour of prosecution and those against prosecution for this offence. The guidance is essentially the same as the interim policy issued yesterday by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales.
The Commission on Assisted Dying, set up in September 2010 and chaired by former Lord Chancellor Charles Falconer, has issued its monumental report on assisted dying in England and Wales. The Commission was funded by two supporters of assisted suicide, author Terry Pratchett and businessman Bernard Lewis, and despite reassurances that the running and outcome of the Commission were independent, some individuals and groups opposed to the practice regrettably refused to give evidence to the Commission. Still, the range and quantity of the evidence, which included evidence gathered from international research visits, qualitative interviews and focus groups, commissioned papers, and seminars, is impressive and can be read and watched here.
Clinical criteria for PVS will clearly need to be revised in the light of this information. However, this research does not answer deep ethical questions about what should be done. These patients have profound brain injuries and their lives are extremely restricted. How will we evaluate their desires? What should we do if they wish to die? We will still need to do the ethical work to evaluate the implications of what they want, particularly whether they wish to live or die. This is one step towards an answer to the question of how we should care for people with severe brain injuries, but it is not the solution. Not only do we need to know what they want, we also need to know how limited medical resources should be fairly distributed and what constitutes a rational desire to die.