Euthanasia - a murky moral world | Tom Wright - Times Online Page 1 of 1 Historic DVDs Starting this Saturday, free with The Times. Days That Shook the World Restaurants are born in cities AA Gill Send your views NEWS COMMENT BUSINESS SPORT LIFE & STYLE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LUXX ARCHIVE OUR PAPERS JOBS & CLASSIFIEDS COLUMNISTS LETTERS OBITUARIES BLOGS CARTOON FAITH RELATED REPORTS Where am I? Home Comment Columnists Guest contributors SHOP MY PROFILE SITEMAP From The Times April 3, 2008 Euthanasia - a murky moral world Legalised killing is unacceptable. We must consider the radical alternative - palliative care Tom Wright TIMES RECOMMENDS Which is worse, inflation or David Aaronovitch, using the pulpit of his column, challenged recession? me to justify an “outrageous claim” that I made in my Easter A World Cup here would go sermon. I said that there was a “militantly atheist and secularist off the rails lobby” that believes that “we have the right to kill... surplus old Obama's Chicago vs people”. He replied that it was simply not true. McCain's Phoenix But there is clearly a strong body of opinion - part of a larger, albeit unorganised, secularising or atheist agenda - pressing in this direction. Such an agenda doesn't need protest marches. It OUR COLUMNISTS has powerful politicians and journalists presenting the case. Columnists Lord Joffe's “assisted dying” Bill, rejected by the Lords last year, David Aaronovitc was, at one level, about “voluntary euthanasia”. The normal word for that is, of course, suicide. But his Bill was about those Blogs too ill to achieve that unaided - it was proposing not just Alpha Mummy “voluntary dying” but “lawful killing” by people enlisted by the patient. You can't reduce this, as Mr Aaronovitch implied, to “people having a right to end their own lives”. The question is, CARTOON do other people have the right to help them do so? Those who support this Bill reckoned they do. He might want to come back at me on two other counts. First, I said “old” people. But clearly young people, too, suffer debilitating and incurable diseases. Reports from the Netherlands suggest that moves are being made to extend the euthanasia protocol to cover new-born children. Secondly, I said “surplus” people. It might well be said that they are not “surplus”, but simply “suffering”. Fair point, but once More cartoons you legalise killing (or “helping people kill themselves”), the key Would you refuse the question will be: how do you know treatment? which people can be killed? A Stem-cell research does reasonably fixed answer would offer a radical new approach emerge, with reference not to the understanding of merely to subjective judgment in dreadful diseases individual cases, but also the Peter Stothard convenience of the wider society. The Editor of the TLS writes We would, in effect, set up a on books, people and politics BACKGROUND governmental sub-department Cardinal Keith O’Brien that would decide in principle attacks embryo Bill which people could be killed - Cardinal Keith O'Brien which might include some who branded a 'liar' by Labour had not explicitly asked to die. peer The Dutch experience suggests Catholic ministers to be that this could happen quite A Don's Life given embryo 'opt-out' quickly. Mary Beard of Cambridge So I stand by my (admittedly and the TLS on culture BACKGROUND ancient and modern abbreviated) form of words. I An embryonic disaster? agree with the British Medical Hope of therapy for Association - not to mention Help Parkinson’s disease the Aged, and the Disability Matter of Conscience Rights Commission - that the Joffe Bill is highly undesirable. So BACKGROUND let me invite David to come with Q&A: Human-animal me to any one of the splendid MOST READ MOST COMMENTED MOST CURIOUS http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3669714.e... 6/22/2008.