The choice to live or die should remain to the end

BMJ 1995;310:1467 (3 June)

Letters

The choice to live or die should remain to the end

EDITOR,--It is ironic that euthanasia should be causing renewedcontroversy at a time when our skills at controlling symptomshave never been greater.

Criticising the palliative care movement is the medical equivalentof kicking a spaniel, but on The Late Show, which discussedthe televised mercy killing of a patient in Holland,¹ CicelySaunders and Nigel Sykes managed to be patronising and insensitiveto both our Dutch colleagues and our patients. To insist thatpatients asking for euthanasia are really asking for somethingelse is a self deluding paternalism. Their rationale seemedto be that any wish to die represented a misapprehension whichcould be corrected by quality palliative care. This may be truein many cases; fear of dying in pain or alone or in distressis responsible for many patients wishing to die, and we canreassure these patients that their fears are largely groundless.Palliative medicine should . . . [Full text of this article]