I would like to ask you please to URGENTLY consider the LONGTERM-suffering people when designing the assisted dying bill.
It is endlessly cruel to allow only the SHORT-term suffering people to end their suffering, whilst keeping us LONGTERM suffering in senseless prolonged excruciating agony!

I am suffocating slowly which is the most cruel thing anyone can go through, accompanied by post-viral poisoning (your body decays alive bit by bit in unmanageable pain) which is under-researched and therefore does not give me a “terminal” diagnosis, so no end to my cruel suffering in sight!
Due to multiple post-viral damage I have to shield of viruses for ever alone trapped in a tiny flat (surrounded by drug dens with dangerous dogs, and gassed out by smoking neighbours, a stinking sewer and a diesel train, also being allergic to nearly everything), cannot go to medical appointments or dentist and cannot have visitors due to the danger of further infections.
I am suffering physically AND mentally as much as it can be! For 6 years I have been begging medical personal as well as the Government to have my suffering ended by death. Unfortunately all on dead ears! Which leaves me to pray that I get cancer soon in hope to be put in a coma, which is bed-blocking, and not available on demand anyway. More and more Brits have to decide to starve themselves to death in order to escape EVEN bigger suffering, which is INSANELY cruel to allow this even! One day it will be known for what it is: torture by the state!

If the “lethal potion” was available to me at ANY time RELIABLY, then I could even risk to go for more medical appointments for a chance to improve my situation, to sort out my permanent agonising tooth ache (although my income might not stretch to it) or risk a hug from a friend! But catching another virus would only increase my suffering which I can not afford at this point, so I have to keep suffering, can neither go direction life nor direction death! This is TOO CRUEL TO BEAR FOR ANYONE!

And there are so many suffering people out there without a voice because they are too weak to campaign, so I am writing in the name of countless people who pray for the end of their suffering, knowing many of them myself!
Also I had several friends who committed a very messy and most cruel suicide because of the lack of assistance! And yet they were the lucky ones, because if your suicide attempt fails, you end up even more crippled than before on suicide watch and nobody will listen to you anymore!

To the people (often disabled people) who don’t understand assisted dying:
Unbearable inhumane excruciating agony should be a CHOICE!
Under the current medieval sadistic law we are DICTATED to suffer!
Our bodies are kidnapped by the government and tortured AGAINST OUR WILL! And if you say you do NOT want autonomy over your own body, then you are lying!
And to the religious people: If “God” dictates humans to suffer, than he is a sadistic monster, even if it is just for creating Parliamentarians who VOTE (!) to keep mankind in prolonged senseless excruciating agony!

Wealthy and middle class people can end their suffering at Dignitas Zurich. They also have people to help them travel there. But if you are sick, alone and poor you can NOT do this! It is a discrimination against the poor once again! In fact I cannot even get a passport since you have to appear in person now because of the finger prints!
It is illegal to torture animals, but even though we human beings can articulate ourselves, there are still Parliamentarians who actually vote to keep the nation in excruciating agony! To the suffering it feels no less than sadistic and monstrous!

PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU, give us a GENEROUS assisted dying law like the Benelux states have!
Regarding safeguards: Persuading somebody into assisted dying should be sentenced like murder, which should prevent people from committing the crime. After all we don’t stop eating, just because somebody could poison our meal. It would be as crazy and as inhumane as keeping us suffering!

Regarding “protecting people who feel like a burden or don’t want to spend their kids’ inheritance”:
I do NOT want to keep suffering because there could be someone somewhere who cannot quite make their mind up yet or doesn’t know what to do with their money (which will end up at Dignitas anyway)!
That sounds like a bad joke!

Regarding safeguards for medical staff: Switzerland has done it for 82 years! The patient signs and takes the potion on camera, with additional witnesses. For the patients who cannot do this themselves anymore: ANY kind of communication on camera expressing the will to die should be RESPECTED and acted on! Because nobody is suffering for them!
At the very least we should have an organisation like the swiss EXIT who take a low annual membership fee for health related advice, with the right of free assisted suicide after 3 years of membership. But then there are people who can not bear to suffer for 3 more years.
I have still a few good organs. I could save a few lives with my death. Perhaps giving us a chance of live donation?

People are worried that their relationship with their doctor could change; but there could be independent assisted dying clinics like in Canada!

People are worried about the “vulnerable”. But that is us, the suffering! Nobody in the world is more vulnerable than those who suffer unbearably!
Where are OUR safeguards??
We have NONE. Whilst your safeguard/piece of mind is Dignitas.
Every single second of excruciating agony is one second too much!

Thank you for listening and please don’t forget: Least of us will be lucky enough to die in a quick accident. Most of us will suffer senseless excruciating agony for a long time before being relieved by death. It will be YOU one day, and it comes quicker than you think!
In fact it should be illegal to reproduce into a country where it is not our first Human Right to end our suffering! Because at the moment our birth is our biggest trap!

There is such a thing as SLOW death! There are countless conditions which are unknown, unrecognised, under-researched and therefore not appearing in medical school books. There is NO pain management and NO palliative care! You can NOT measure suffering, so it should NEVER be made dependant on diagnosis, age (I am 55) or any time span! That is medieval and cruel!
It is IMPOSSIBLE for non-suffering people to understand permanent progressive excruciating agony! Therefore non-suffering people should NOT be allowed to vote AGAINST a generous assisted suicide law!
All we want is AUTONOMY over our OWN body! NOBODY gets something out of ME suffering! Suffering is NOT life! And ending suffering is NOT killing! It is love, compassion and humanity!

Sincerely
Marion

And to Kevin Yuill:
You won’t be the first or last “Professor” to spend a lifetime preaching against ending suffering, to then end up at Dignitas (and your friends and family too)!
You just don’t know it YET!!

P.S.: My body is not your business, so stay out of it!!

Did you just send us off to budger ourselves, you sick man????

Yuill writes: ‘ I am opposed to a change in the law, not – as I clearly state in my article – to the occasional acts of mercy in very invidious situations.’ This is more gibberish; if it means anything at all, it means that ‘acts of mercy’ are acceptable to Yuill even though illegal under the law which Yuill himself wishes to support. So he supports a law which ex hypothesi in his view is at least in this respect (not allowing acts of mercy) defective. All of which is self-contradictory.
I would be grateful to Yuill if he considers what he wants to say carefully and inspects it for weaknesses before wasting people’s time by committing it to paper prematurely.

Tony Nicklinson could, as any competent adult who is able to communicate (which includes Tony Nicklinson) can, cause the end of his life. In fact, he did. He refused food and drink – as everyone should have the right to do – and caused his own death within 5 days. That is nine days sooner than the “cooling off period” in British proposals for assisted suicide.

I am opposed to a change in the law, not – as I clearly state in my article – to the occasional acts of mercy in very invidious situations. So I cannot say what I would do in specific circumstances. Nor do I oppose the present DPP guidelines which say that prosecutions must be in the public interest. Indeed, the 1961 Suicide Act has worked well; between 2009 and 2020, there were only four successful prosecutions under Section 2 that took place.

Yuill deals here with two entirely separate issues: suicide, and assisted suicide. In his latest garbled comment (paragraph two), he conflates the two. (Please reread this now to arrive at an estimate of his intellectual acuity.)
Assisted suicide is contentious, and although enjoying overwhelming public support, opponents are not necessarily cruel or fatuous. But condemning suicide itself – legalised in the Suicide Act of 1961 – is a fanatical position. It is tantamount to saying not only that people do not have this fundamental right over their own body, but that de facto they are compelled to remain in a world which may to them be a living nightmare.

“Does Yuill really share Durkheim’s 19th C view that ‘suicide must be classed among immoral acts’?” Yes. I think we should continue to prevent suicide. My case, simply put, is that it is immoral to give the proverbial man standing on the ledge a push, even if he asks for it. We should instead talk him down.

Nor do I share the miserabilist anti-natalist cult that Brewer and Lilly seem to belong to. Both ascribe to Matthew Parris’s idea that the old, weak and ill should sacrifice themselves for the good of the NHS. That, it seems to me, is anti-humanism rather than humanism.

What I would love someone to answer is why we should be given a right to help with something everyone can already do themself?

By the way, the term “delivery” is only relevant if one thinks one is on their way somewhere else. That is hardly a humanist conception.

Name correction: Tony Nicklinson