If you have been affected by the issues in this programme, you can call Samaritans free from any phone on 116 123 (it will not appear on your phone bill), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find details of your nearest branch. The Motor Neurone Disease Association also provides support to people affected by motor neurone disease in England, Wales and NI - 03457 626262 or visit The Motor Neurone Disease Association.
Research suggests that one person a fortnight travels from the UK to Switzerland to end their lives. Often they will have a terminal illness but it isn’t always the case.
In 2015, 75-year old Gill Pharoah’s trip to Lifecircle was well-publicised. Indeed, she wrote a blog for The Sunday Times about her choice. In her case, she didn’t have a terminal illness although a bad case of shingles had left her unable to do many of the things she once enjoyed. Her fears were, as a former palliative care nurse who had seen many people die, that she might experience an undignified death. Having decided that her life was complete, Gill Pharoah travelled to Switzerland in the summer of 2015. In this video her partner Johan Southall defends her decision.
Should assisted suicide be available for people who aren’t terminally ill?
Are there alternatives to assisted suicide that enable people to die with dignity?
Would you support a friend or relative who wanted to travel to Switzerland to end their lives?
What are your thoughts? Have your say in the comments section below:
PLEASE NOTE: This discussion hub is intended for discussing the issues surrounding assisted suicide and the right to die, please do not use it for personal attacks on any individuals – either those featured in the programme or others using the hub. Any comments along this line will be removed.
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I do not have a terminal illness. I don't want to die yet. But My family has a strong history of cancer and I expect to get it one day. I watched my mother die of oesophageal cancer, after she had survived breast cancer and non-Hodgins lymphoma. Her death was cruel and painful for her family to watch. She suffered, despite all the efforts made by the doctors to keep her comfortable. She tried chemo - but she had been through it before, was left permanently weaker by it and just could not cope with it this time.
If I get cancer, there are treatments that I would try, but I would be very reluctant to have chemo, as I have seen what it did to my mum. If I knew that I was going to be ill ir in pain for the rest of my life and that there was no real hope of regaining a good quality of life, then I would like to have the choice of assisted suicide.
I have had to put several pets to sleep when they became ill. It is always a very difficult decision - until the point comes when you know it is the kindest thing, the least selfish thing that we can do for them. It is done out of love.
Of course there must be safeguards - and this programme showed that the Swiss have put good safeguards in place. It can be done. I think the UK should allow its citizens the same choice. We should not have to go to another country for this kindness.
I hope the politicians will think more deeply about this. The most telling point of Simon's Choice for me was when the lady at the clinic in Basel was speaking to Debbie and saying that we tend to treat the terminally ill as though they were children who could not make decisions for themselves. Debbie could not understand Simon's desperation until he tried to hang himself. Our politicians are like that, treating those asking for assisted suicide as though they were children, not understanding their dreadful desperation.
I really hope that this programme will help to bring about a change in UK law, sooner rather than later. I hope that, for once, neither the antis nor the superficial media in this country will prevail.
I have an incurable and progressive illness since the age of 13 and I am 53 today, the illness has taken my life completely.I can not leave the house and I can not work and can not look after myself.
The dilemna was like Ian just stay and exist like this, which is not living, but just existing or surviving or end your life. I have decided to end it in Switzerland like Simon in the documentary and as a coincidence the same company as Simon Lifecircle, my application has been accepted recently and my friends and family who have seen me suffered for 37 years support me in my decision.
I think my case is from another angle I am not paralysed physically and will not be, but I have no life due to the lethargy I can not do anything. I have been abandoned by social services without any support, they have treated me like an animal and I had to fight for any short help I got and as such this has driven me to take the decison to die.
When I told my doctors, mobility team social workers etc there is this pity to help in a situation where nobody can help and I find it rather disgusting, they are only prepared to help you if you are dying otherwise if you are very sick it is ok to exist without any support or help.
The illness isolates you socially, but the system that is the Law, social services, the medical profession and society in general casts you away because you serve no purpose in society anymore. You can not work so you can not pay tax, your social life has no interaction, so you are for the authorities and society already dead.
I have been so badly treated in the system has a result that adding the suffering I have decided to die to exist is not worth it. Morton Neuron Disease and MS etc are terrible disease, but there are other disease that are very terrible as well like mine that do not paralyse you so to speak, but stop all your life, which in fact lead to the same and that is not very well covered in the media.
Conclusion is that either I will die in Switzerland if I make it on the waiting list, or at my own hands and I know the how, but not the when yet.
To have to leave my home in the UK to die is not right I should have the right to die decently and peacefully here why travel to Switzerland.
The Law must change