Debate should be about care, not assisted suicide
17th January 2012
The growth of palliative care, not the legalisation of assisted suicide, should be the central debate about caring for the dying, says David Burrowes MP.
If you were to read the media reports this year, you would think that the only debate about caring for the dying is whether assisted suicide should be legalised. So I am pleased this morning to be leading a debate in Parliament that provides an opportunity to refocus the debate on the question of what is good quality care of the dying.
MPs will be able to show their support for care that achieves the best quality of life for patients even when their illness cannot be cured. Fifty years ago, Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, said:
"You matter because you are you. You matter to the last moment of your life and we will do all we can to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die."
It is with these words in mind that I want to give more attention to the excellent work of palliative care and the hospice movement. Aside from the small number of high-profile terminally ill patients who assert their right to die, we should remember that there are still too many vulnerable people approaching the end of their lives who do not feel valued. These are the people who most need the protection of the law and the provision of good quality palliative care.
In healthcare we can often equate dying with failure rather than a normal process. This attitude ignores those who will not respond to treatment but can still be significantly cared for. While death may be a tragic inevitability, palliative and hospice care can ensure that the remainder of life is a life still worth living. Palliative care improves the quality of life for patients suffering incurable, progressive illness in accordance with their values and preferences.
Dying, of course, is not just a health issue, which is why hospices are so good at meeting social, emotional, spiritual and psychological needs. They regard the relief of suffering for the dying as being at least as important as restoring people to good health. The challenge is whether the state and society shares this attitude.
One good sign is the expansion of local charitable hospices, which provide more than £700m of care, the majority of which is generously donated by the communities that they serve. Additionally, more than 100,000 people donate their time to local hospices each year. We need to highlight this sector, champion its causes, support its growth and take pride as a nation in how we care for the vulnerable at the end of their lives.
The growth of palliative care, not the legalisation of assisted suicide, should be the central debate about caring for the dying. As a country we must do all we can to allow the terminally ill to live life until death, make the intolerable tolerable, replace hopelessness with hope, and desperation with serenity.
The principle that will govern the debate today is summed up by the French biologist Jean Rostand: "For my part I believe that there is no life so degraded, debased, deteriorated or impoverished that it does not deserve respect and is not worth defending with zeal and conviction."
I hope that my colleagues and I will show, in our numbers and the quality of our debate, that same zeal and conviction that we care for the dying.
