BMA corrects Lord Falconer’ s misrepresentation of its position on ‘assisted dying’

Yesterday I drew attention to Lord Falconer’s false claim in the Times that the British Medical Association had adopted a neutral position on ‘assisted dying’ (a euphemism for assisted suicide and euthanasia).

In fact the BMA, like the RCGP, RCP and Association for Palliative Medicine, are all opposed to any change in the law.

The story of the former Lord Chancellor’s ‘fiction’ has since been picked up by George Pitcher on the Daily Mail blogs.

And now the BMA itself has written to the Times to correct the ‘error’.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, BMA Director of Professional Activities, writes in the Times today (£):

Sir, Your article (‘Allowing Tony to die would be euthanasia’ (£), July 4) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3465014.ece is incorrect when it says that the BMA has adopted a neutral position on assisted dying. A motion to change the BMA’s policy was debated last week at our annual conference but was overwhelmingly rejected. The BMA remains firmly opposed to assisted dying and we are not lobbying for any change in the law.

The letter is accompanied on the same page by a very interesting comment (£) from Terry Pratchett, Patron of Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society), who funded Falconer’s now defunct Commission on Assisted Dying.

He is arguing, unlike DID (which must cause some embarrassment), that euthanasia should be available to severely disabled people and not just ‘mentally competent, terminally ill adults’ (aka the DID mantra).

I have also written to the Times in response to Falconer’s false claims on behalf of Care Not Killing. The letter is on the Times website but I am not holding my breath about it making the paper edition.

I have pasted it below

My letter to the Times about Lord Falconer’s new bill

Former Lord Chancellor, Charles Falconer, in seeking to promote his new assisted suicide bill (The Times, 4 July), makes the false claim that ‘the position of the British Medical Association (is) now neutral rather than opposed’.

The BMA is in fact opposed to the legalisation of both euthanasia and assisted suicide and affirmed this position at their annual representative meeting on 27 June when they rejected by a large majority a motion to go neutral brought by doctors affiliated to Dignity in Dying, the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society. It is astounding that Falconer seems not to know this.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatric Society are also opposed as are around 65% of doctors generally and over 90% of palliative medicine specialists.

All major disability rights groups in Britain also oppose any change in the law believing it will lead to increased prejudice towards them and increased pressure on them to end their lives.

Furthermore the so-called ‘robust safeguards’ in Falconer’s new bill are essentially those that British Parliaments have rejected three times since 2006 out of concern for public safety in the House of Lords (2006 and 2009) and in Scotland (2010).

The present law with its blanket prohibition on both assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.

Why legalising assisted suicide for anyone at all will inevitably lead to incremental extension

Pro-euthanasia activists always make a great play of how their proposals to help people kill themselves are extremely modest and are bound by ‘robust safeguards’.

Dignity in Dying, the former Voluntary Euthanasia Society, is a world leader in this art and their new draft bill, championed by Lord Falconer, is a classic example.

It’s only for the mentally competent, only for the terminally ill, only for adults they say.

There will be no killing of children, disabled people or demented people. It’s all going to be strictly controlled.

In fact it is only the beginning for two main reasons.

The first is that DID’s position is ultimately illogical. Their main arguments, autonomy (it’s my right) and compassion (I’m suffering unbearably), apply equally to some people who are not ‘mentally competent, terminally ill adults’. There are people who are not adults, not terminally ill or not mentally competent who claim they are suffering unbearably or who want to die.

Locked-in syndrome sufferer Tony Nicklinson is not terminally ill and celebrity novelist Terry Pratchett (pictured), who has Alzheimer’s, will soon not be mentally competent as a result of dementia. But they both want the ‘right to die’. On the other hand most terminally ill people do not want to die and are not suffering unbearably.

This means that if we legalise assisted suicide or euthanasia for those who are mentally competent terminally ill adults, the logic of the autonomy and compassion arguments will demand extension to other groups of people. Incremental extension is inevitable because the proposed legislation is actually discriminatory. It won’t survive five minutes in its current form without a human rights challenge on grounds of equality. Once you have a right for some, it will be argued, it must be there for all.

The second problem is that there are already many ever-so-slightly-more-radical groups which are already pushing for extension beyond mentally competent terminally ill adults. SOARS and FATE want it for elderly people, terminally ill or not, and EXIT International (Philip Nitschke’s outfit) says it should be available for the elderly bereaved and troubled teenagers.

In fact in the Times this week, celebrity novelist Terry Pratchett , a patron of Dignity in Dying who part-funded the defunct Falconer Commission, is saying that an exception should be made for Nicklinson who is not terminally ill and would require euthanasia and not assisted suicide (as he is not capable of killing himself even with assistance). So it seems that DID are unable to restrain the enthusiasm for extension of even their own patrons. I expect that Pratchett will also want an exception to be made for himself after he loses mental competence.

Pratchett argues as follows (£):

‘It appears that Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Tony Nicklinson are both stuck in the aspic of the law, which I quite understand. But surely, since Mr Nicklinson has a terrifying syndrome that none of us would ever wish to experience, one can’t help but wonder whether the law can take second place to compassion?’

I have already pointed out twenty disturbing facts about assisted suicide and euthanasia in Europe that Terry Pratchett does not tell us in the course of his relentless campaigning.

Don’t be fooled. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society may have changed its name but it has not changed its agenda. If they ever manage to get a bill passed by parliament which allows assisted suicide or euthanasia for anyone at all you can be sure that even before the ink is dry they will be clamouring for extension, and many will find the logic of the argument based on autonomy and compassion to be compelling.

It’s best not to go there at all.

Any change in the law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would especially affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

Furthermore, persistent requests for euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for so our priority must be to ensure that good care addressing people's physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all.

The present law making assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal is clear and right and does not need changing. The penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong deterrent to exploitation and abuse whilst giving discretion to prosecutors and judges in hard cases.

Hard cases, like that of Tony Nicklinson, make bad law. Even in a free democratic society there are limits to human freedom and the law must not be changed to accommodate the wishes of a small number of desperate and determined people.

My letter to Jeremy Hunt about BBC media portrayal of suicide

Last week I wrote on behalf of Care Not Killing to Jeremy Hunt (pictured), the Secretary of State for Cuture, Olympics, Media and Sport. I asked him to carry out an investigation into the way assisted suicide is covered by the BBC and its link to English suicide rates. I also wrote along similar lines to the Secretary of State for Health.

Whilst the BBC has issued a statement denying bias in its media coverage of assisted suicide (as expected!) it has not yet addressed the matter of suicide contagion. That in itself is very interesting given that the issue has huge media coverage all over the world in the last week. Here is my letter to Mr Hunt:

The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport

Dear Sir,

Re Link between BBC coverage of assisted suicide and English suicide rates

I am writing to ask you, as Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, to carry out an urgent investigation into the way assisted suicide is covered by the BBC and its link to English suicide rates.

The television programme, ‘Choosing to Die’, featuring celebrity author Terry Pratchett and scheduled to be shown BBC2 at 2100 on Monday 13 June, features the death on screen of a British man, Peter Smedley, at the Dignitas facility in Zurich. The programme has already had a huge amount of advance media publicity.

On the basis of its reported contents, it breaches international and national guidelines on suicide portrayal. As such it poses a significant risk to vulnerable people and, on the basis of available evidence, it is highly likely that copycat suicides will follow the screening.

The BBC editorial guidelines note that ‘factual reporting and fictional portrayal of suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm have the potential to make such actions appear possible, and even appropriate, to the vulnerable’.

The WHO international guidelines on suicide portrayal refer to over 50 published studies, systematic reviews of which have consistently drawn the same conclusion, that media reporting of suicide can lead to imitative suicidal behaviours. This phenomenon is variably termed suicide contagion, copycat suicide, suicide cluster or the Werther effect.

The WHO recommendations to media professionals include the following:

•Avoid language which sensationalizes or normalizes suicide, or presents it as a solution to problems
•Avoid prominent placement and undue repetition of stories about suicide
•Avoid explicit description of the method used in a completed or attempted suicide
•Avoid providing detailed information about the site of a completed or attempted suicide
•Exercise caution in using photographs or video footage
•Take particular care in reporting celebrity suicides

Since 2008 the BBC has screened no less than five docudramas and documentaries portraying assisted suicide in a positive light and none giving the opposite perspective. The above recommendations have been repeatedly and consistently breached.

Over this same period, and previously, the BBC has granted an international platform to many personal accounts about assisted suicide. Cases are often highlighted in painstaking detail featuring long personal interviews and often with substantial extraneous information about the individual’s personal life.

Contrary views are either not expressed, or are at best relegated to single sentence reactionary sound-bites. This creates the false impression that the small minority these cases constitute are somehow representative of all people facing suffering or death.

The programme which the BBC intends to screen on Monday constitutes a major risk to vulnerable people and may also be in breach of the Suicide Act 1961 which was amended in 2010 by the Coroners and Justice Act, making it illegal to ‘encourage or assist’ the suicide of another person. This new wording was adopted specifically to counter the encouragement of suicide by media or internet amidst concerns following the Bridgend cluster of suicides in 2007.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that suicides in England rose from 3,993 in 2007 to 4,390 in 2009 – an overall increase of 10% and the greatest two year rise in over a decade. Amongst males aged 45-74, the age group of Terry Pratchett and suicide victim Peter Smedley, the rise has been 16% from 1,174 to 1370. The latter figure is the highest in over 20 years.

It is noteworthy that the national suicide prevention strategy for England, launched in 2002, is failing dismally to reach its targets. In addition no annual reports seem to be available since 2008.

I attach further reference information and look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely


Peter Saunders
Campaign Director
Care Not Killing Alliance

Pratchett programme is further evidence of BBC bias and will fuel more suicides

The BBC’s decision to screen a man's dying moments at the Dignitas suicide facility in a documentary fronted by Terry Pratchett has already come under heavy criticism.

A five-minute sequence in the BBC2 programme, due to be shown on 13 June, shows celebrity author Pratchett witnessing Peter, a British man in his early 70s who has motor neurone disease, taking his own life at the controversial Swiss facility.

This is yet another blatant example of the BBC playing the role of cheerleader in the vigorous campaign being staged by the pro-euthanasia lobby to legalise assisted suicide in Britain.’

Having failed spectacularly in the House of Lords twice since 2006 to convince legislators that legalising assisted suicide is safe, and finding themselves blocked repeatedly by medical professional bodies, Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) is now using celebrity endorsement and media portrayal of suicide in order to soften up public opinion ahead of a new drive to change the law later this year.

By putting their extensive public resources behind this campaign and by giving Terry Pratchett, who is both a patron on DID and key funder of the controversial Falconer Commission, a platform to propagate his views, the BBC is actively fuelling this move to impose assisted suicide on this country and runs the risk of pushing vulnerable people over the edge into taking their lives. It is also flouting both its own guidelines on suicide portrayal and impartiality.

This portrayal of suicide by the BBC, along with Pratchett’s celebrity endorsement, breaches both international and BBC guidelines on suicide portrayal and risks encouraging further suicides amongst those who are sick, elderly or disabled. It is both a recipe for elder abuse and also a threat to vulnerable people, many of whom already feel under pressure at a time of financial crisis and threatened health cuts to end their lives for fear of being a burden on others. The dangers of portraying suicide on the media (Werther effect, suicide contagion, or copycat suicide) are well recognised in the medical literature.

The BBC’s own editorial guidelines on portrayal of suicide are very clear and call for ‘great sensitivity’: ‘Factual reporting and fictional portrayal of suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm have the potential to make such actions appear possible, and even appropriate, to the vulnerable.’

The WHO guidance on the media coverage of suicide is equally unambiguous: ‘Don’t publish photographs or suicide notes. Don’t report specific details of the method used. Don’t give simplistic reasons. Don’t glorify or sensationalize suicide.’

This latest move by the BBC is a disgraceful use of licence-payers money and further evidence of a blatant campaigning stance. The corporation has now produced five documentaries or docudramas since 2008 portraying assisted suicide in a positive light.

Where are the balancing programmes showing the benefits of palliative care, promoting investment on social support for vulnerable people or highlighting the great dangers of legalisation which have convinced parliaments in Australia, France, Canada, Scotland and the US to resist any change in the law in the last twelve months alone? One will not it seems, hear any of this from the BBC.

The BBC is in flagrant breach of both its own guidelines on suicide portrayal and also its public duty to remain impartial. This will inevitably lead to further criticism of bias and will only serve to place the lives of more vulnerable people at risk.

Why I told the Daily Mail that the BBC was acting as the ‘cheerleader’ for assisted suicide

Last Friday I was quoted on the front page of the Daily Mail as saying that the BBC was acting as ‘cheerleader’ in the campaign to legalise assisted suicide.

This article amplifies those comments and gives some of the wider background.

The BBC have recently filmed a man killing himself at the notorious Dignitas suicide facility for a controversial ‘documentary’ to be fronted by celebrity author Terry Pratchett, a prominent supporter of euthanasia.

The programme, entitled ‘Choosing To Die’, due to be screened this summer, follows a 71 year old man (known only as Peter) in the late stages of motor neurone disease as he travels from Britain to the Swiss centre to end his life in the fantasy novelist’s company.

Screening the moment of a suicide victim’s death will be a first for the BBC although a Sky Real Lives programme first crossed the rubicon in doing so back in 2008.

My full newspaper statement was as follows:

‘The BBC is acting like a cheerleader for legalising assisted suicide. It is regrettable that a man’s death will be shown on screen but we are also concerned that this documentary will not be balanced. Given Sir Terry Pratchett’s position, the fear is that it will show all the supposed benefits of assisted death with very little redress.’

Terry Pratchett is already well known as a campaigner for the legalisation of assisted suicide, and provided funding for Lord Falconer’s discredited Commission on Assisted Dying.

Whilst being a patron of Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society), he has, like Michael Irwin and Philip Nitschke, much broader aims than those claimed by DID, who passionately protest (methinks too much) that they want a change in the law only for ‘terminally ill, mentally competent adults’

According to the BBC website, Pratchett has a larger agenda. He believes that ‘everybody possessed of a debilitating and incurable disease should be allowed to pick the hour of their death’. He is quoted in Australia as supporting it for the broader category of ‘seriously ill people’.

The DID website reports his aims as even more far-reaching: ‘I believe passionately that any individual should have the right to choose, as far as it is possible, the time and the conditions of their death.’

This programme will be the fifth produced by the BBC in just three years, presented by a pro-euthanasia campaigner or sympathiser, which has been specifically designed to portray taking one’s own life in a positive light.

‘I'll Die When I Choose’ (8 December 2008) was a BBC Panorama documentary fronted by Margo Macdonald MSP in the lead up to tabling her ‘End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill’ in the Scottish Parliament. The programme screened a total of four times between 8 and 14 December 2008. The bill also received massive coverage by the BBC but was overwhelmingly defeated by 85 to 16 in November 2010.

‘A Short Stay in Switzerland’ (January 2009) was a 90 minute docudrama starring Julie Walters (and written by award-winning writer Frank McGuinness) which told the story of the death of Bath GP Anne Turner at the Dignitas facility in January 2006. It screened seven times between 25 January 2009 and 27 January 2010. BBC health correspondent Fergus Walsh, who accompanied Dr Turner on her final journey, actually played himself in the film.

The 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture, ‘Shaking hands with death’ (1 February 2010) also featured Terry Pratchett making the case for assisted suicide for patients, like himself, with Alzheimer’s disease. A hand-picked audience in the Royal College of Physicians in London signalled their approval as he described himself ending his life, by nonchalantly sipping poisoned champagne, in his back garden.

BBC East Midlands ‘Inside Out Programme’ (15 February 2010) featured a confession by producer Ray Gosling to smothering a gay lover with AIDS some years before. The story, after an exhaustive police investigation, turned out to be pure fantasy, but not until after the BBC machinery had blown it up into a massive international news story just prior to the Director of Public Prosecutions reporting on his assisted suicide prosecution criteria.

I am also aware of a sixth ‘documentary’ currently being put together, again presented by a keen advocate of legalising assisted suicide, news of which has not yet entered the public domain.

During this three year period there has not been one BBC programme presenting the opposite point of view. This is in spite of the fact that all three parliamentary bills attempting to legalise the practice in the last five years have been heavily defeated and despite the continuing robust opposition to legalisation from disability rights groups, medical professionals and faith groups.

And yet not one representative of any of these groups has been given the opportunity to put their views as prime presenter of a BBC documentary. Other than in news bulletins no specialist in palliative medicine has had access to a BBC documentary to explain the benefits of good care, no disabled person has been able to convey their anxieties about a change in the law and no faith leader has been permitted to present an alternative perspective on suffering and dying.

Specifically, no opponent of legalisation has been given the opportunity by our national (taxpayer funded) broadcaster to put to the British public, in a documentary, the arguments that have three times persuaded parliament about the dangers to vulnerable people of a change in the law.

By contrast, many proponents of assisted suicide, who have expressed a strong persistent wish to be ‘helped to die’ by their own hands, have been granted an international platform by our national broadcaster, to tell their stories in lurid detail and without cross-examination, creating the false impression that the small minority they constitute are somehow representative of all people facing suffering or death.

Each from Reginald Crew to Tony Nicklinson has his or her case highlighted in painstaking detail by the BBC usually featuring long personal interviews and often with substantial extraneous information about their lives emotively conveyed. Contrary views are either not expressed, or are at best relegated to single sentence reactionary soundbites:

Readers will recognise many of the personalities involved as household names: Anne Turner, John Close, Debbie Purdy, Raymond Cutkelvin, Diane Pretty, Daniel James, Sir Edward and Lady Downes, Nan Maitland, and so it goes on and on and on.

In each case, the power of the personal narrative is presented skillfully to shape public opinion, courtesy of the BBC with all of its publicly funded resources being brought to bear.

What is somewhat ironic about this whole process is the fact that there are strict codes about media coverage of suicide, not only from bodies like the World Health Organisation, but also from the BBC itself (on covering both suicide and also criminal acts), which are constantly and repeatedly flouted.

The WHO guidance on the media coverage of suicide is very clear:

‘Don’t publish photographs or suicide notes. Don’t report specific details of the method used. Don’t give simplistic reasons. Don’t glorify or sensationalize suicide. Don’t use religious or cultural stereotypes. Don’t apportion blame.’

The BBC it seems is going full speed in the opposite direction.

By contrast the WHO advice about appropriate media practice is largely ignored by the BBC:

‘Refer to suicide as a completed suicide, not a successful one. Present only relevant data, on the inside pages. Highlight alternatives to suicide. Provide information on help lines and community resources. Publicize risk indicators and warning signs.’

Concerns about the well-documented phenomenon of suicide contagion, especially following suicides carried out by celebrities (more on this later), and the effects of suicide on other individuals and society at large, are simply not part of the narrative when the BBC covers these issues. Instead it has adopted almost a campaigning stance.

No one is denying that the debate about assisted suicide is crucially important. This is a free democratic society and those who wish to see a change in the law are fully entitled to express their views in the public square. Furthermore it is to be expected that private media outlets will want to pursue a specific editorial line.

But with an issue as important as this one, campaigners should not have the added advantage of being able to spread their propaganda by using the publicly funded national broadcasting corporation effectively as a private public relations company and press office.