The case against Assisted Suicide – report of Professor Nigel Biggar’s Lecture

Aug 2, 2018 by Jill

by Chris Sugden, Church of England Newspaper:

The second Summer Lecture at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford on the topic of Assisted Suicide was given on Wednesday afternoon July 25^th by Professor Nigel Biggar, author of “Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia”.

His reviewed reasons for making the law favour assisted suicide, a Christian valuation of the arguments, the current situation and critiqued the latest attempt to legalise it.

He chose ‘physician assisted suicide’ rather than ‘assisted dying’ which could equally refer to the work of professionals helping people to die with minimum distress.

The case for assisted suicide points to irremediable suffering at the end of life which appears pointless; the alleged right of people to do what they like with their lives; the slippery slopes of which critics warned have not occurred; a properly formulated law would protect vulnerable patients from being manipulated and over 80% of the population are alleged to be in favour.

Professor Biggar’s own assumptions are a high regard for the dignity of individuals, shared between Christians and many non-Christians; that personal autonomy is necessarily limited by social obligations to other people, and while human life is often hard, a humane society offers support to people in adversity to persist in living as most of the time life is worth living; assisted suicide may be compassionate but is imprudent as it risks weakening the well founded taboo against suicide and so puts a much larger number of people at risk; perfect solutions to secular problems are unavailable and none guarantee against misuse; failures and malice cannot be guaranteed against by institutional and procedural reform and campaigners need to be honest about such side effects; and human history can roll backwards as well as forwards – not all reforms are beneficial.

The legal status quo is that since 1961 suicide has not been a crime because a failed attempt at suicide should be met with therapy not jail. But assistance is forbidden because the normal response to neighbours in severe distress should not be to help them kill themselves. But it is not usually prosecuted if it is proved there was no malevolent exploitation of a vulnerable person’s distress such as pressure from greedy relatives.

Attempts have been made to persuade Parliament from 2011 onwards. Campaigners have been clear that these would be, if successful, the first step to lobbying for the extension of the provision from the voluntary and informed choice of the terminally ill to those tired of life. Any restrictions would not last long.

Biggar noted that many vulnerable people live in a hostile environment. 500,000 elderly people are being abused by someone in a position of trust, even by health care professionals. This would affect their judgement since “what I want depends much on what others want around me. If I am treated like a waste of space I will feel a waste of space.” There is no guarantee against manipulation. “There are real sins out there. We are weak, tired, impatient and greedy. I am not however afraid of human weakness so much as of human goodness and the elderly’s concern about being a burden and using up their children’s inheritance on their care.”

Commenting on the campaigners’ arguments, Biggar noted physical suffering can be treated by palliative sedation, even if it risks shortening life. Autonomy must be limited by social obligations. Creating a right to assisted suicide would create an obligation to fulfil it. Conscience clauses would not last long.

While in Oregon the slippery slope has yet to appear, the more likely model is the Netherlands model which is far more risk prone.

In opinion polls the phrase used is ‘assisted dying’. If ‘assisted suicide’ is used support drops from 80% to 50%. MPs defeated the latest bill by 318-111 because they have longer to consider the social issues and unintended social effects.

In discussion it was noted that campaigners focus passionately on narrow points and therefore omit the wider issues. Arguments for better palliative care should be made with equal passion along with a call to reverse the law on “Do Not Resuscitate”; this requires resuscitation except where a DNR request has been made, often with prolonged and useless interventions.

The culture of death began as an academic exercise, by Felipe E. Vizcarrondo, MercatorNet