West End news: MP, Mark Field draws on personal experience to urge caution on right to die issue

Published: 5 February 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM

THE government will risk “sanitising” death if it bows to growing pressure to legalise assisted suicide, MP Mark Field has warned in his blog. 
He has also written movingly of the unforeseen benefits of keeping a close friend alive, even though he spent 13 years in a coma. Mr Field wades through the ethical quagmire that surrounds the debate, saying MPs should be wary of the emotional public reaction to recent high profile cases going through the courts – such as that of multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy – when they consider relaxing legislation to give terminally ill people the right to die.
The Conservative MP for Cities of London and Westminster urged caution because of what he said could be future repercussions, burdening selfless people with an opportunity to end their perceived dependency and blurring the lines between the right to die and a duty to die.
Mr Field spent much time caring for his father before he died of cancer in 1991, as well as losing a close friend from Oxford University last month with a similar condition.
He wrote: “I suspect the automatic reaction of many in the face of the deeply moving cases we see every so often in the courts would be to legalise assisted dying. Surely, the argument goes, there is room for compassion in the legal system, provided appropriate safeguards are in place. 
“Similar arguments were put forward in the debate which preceded the Abortion Act 1967. Yet 43 years since that law came into place we see advertisements inviting women to ‘walk in, walk out’ for lunchtime terminations. I am by no means anti-abortion but Lord Steel, the architect of the act, has himself admitted that he never anticipated ‘anything like’ the current number of terminations and said that Parliament never intended the law to be used in that way. 
“Do we want to be making those kinds of statements a few decades on from an Assisted Dying Act? An acceptance of assisted dying not only carries the risk of the right to die developing into a duty to die. It makes way for the inadvertent sanitisation of death.”
The warning follows a letter from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well to Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, protesting about guidelines he was forced to draw up after Mrs Purdy won a legal challenge demanding he make explicit grounds on which those who assist death would be charged with an offence. With juries not prepared to enforce the law, critics of a knee-jerk legalisation, say there must be safeguards in place.
Mr Field wrote about the case of his university friend in support of his views. He said that despite spending 13 years unable to communicate, he still gained something from staying alive.
“Andrew, an old university friend who lapsed into a diabetic coma in 1996, spent the next 13 years requiring 24-hour care without being capable of voluntary movement or even the most basic communication. 
“In Andrew’s case it was impossible to assess the quality of his life in any meaningful way – while it was clear that he retained high levels of understanding, he was unable to communicate the extent of his daily pain. I genuinely feel he took pleasure from aspects of his life and the dedication of his parents and carers brought huge rewards for all in contact with him. 
“Beyond his nearest loved ones, who should have had any right to judge objectively the worth of his existence?”