LETTERS Choosing life
Sir: Ludovic Kennedy, in his polemic against anti-euthanasia campaigners, con- veniently overlooks a vital fact (Diary, 1 February): that both hospice doctors, who totally oppose euthanasia, and doctors in Holland who actually practice it, admit that it is depression not physical pain which accounts for the overwhelming number of requests for euthanasia.
I am opposed to both voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, since I believe it is wrong to deliberately kill vulnerable human beings, and because it establishes the prin- ciple that killing is an appropriate and acceptable alternative to caring. In his enthusiasm for legalising voluntary euthanasia, however, Ludovic Kennedy also overlooks the fact that non-voluntary euthanasia is already going on in this coun- try (handicapped newborns are routinely sedated and starved to death in our hospi- tals), and that in Holland, which is always held up as a shining example of the sup- posed 'benefits' of euthanasia, 13,816 out of 19,675 euthanasia deaths in 1990 were patients who had not expressed a wish to die.
Mr Kennedy appears to think that chron- ic sickness, incontinence, tube-feeding and uncontrollable insomnia are indignities which justify killing the sufferer. This is more an indictment of the pro-euthanasia mentality than a description of the inevitable lot of suffering people. Condi- tions in themselves are not undignified or humiliating.
It is only people's attitude to them, con- firming deep-rooted fears of shame, which causes sufferers to feel such revulsion at their own bodies that death seems the only way out.
I disagree with Mr Kennedy's assertion that these admittedly distressing problems cannot be adequately controlled either at home or in a hospice. I would also reject his view that killing people is an adequate response to human problems.
I have a severe disability which has caused me to experience on various occa- sions all the supposed indignities which Ludovic Kennedy cites. At times when I have had little constructive help and sup- port I have regarded such conditions as well-nigh intolerable. Positive support, encouragement and practical help have enabled me to see that such difficulties can be controlled in the right environment, do not detract from human worth or dignity, and do not justify the hopelessness inherent in 'ending it all'.
Alison Davis
35 Stileham Bank, Milborne St Andrew, Blandford Forum, Dorset
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