BY STEWART SLATER
“There is a considerable overlap in intelligence between the smartest bear and the dumbest tourist.” So, apparently, said a ranger in Yosemite National Park when explaining why the bear-proof bin had not yet been invented. Make a trash can Yogi and his chums could not access, and neither could some humans. Make one everyone could use and, for animals smarter than the average ursine, it was party time.
As an approach to policy-making (if we can give the provision of bins such a grand title), it was admirably wise. It took account of the motivations of those involved, and their abilities. It dealt with the world as it was, not as we might like it to be. And it recognised that not every problem has an acceptable solution.
Sadly, however, such an enlightened approach does not extend to all areas in which the state might involve itself. Take Assisted Dying.
Parliament has, once more, considered the issue, as it winds its seemingly inexorable progress towards the statute books. The issues are well-known – how do we filter out those who are being coerced and how do we avoid the slippery slope which has seen it extended to ever more categories of patients in other jurisdictions?
The initial legislation attempted to solve the former problem by introducing “panels” which would include a High Court judge to decide on applications and proponents argued that any expansion would require further legislation and thus further debate. Those against shot back that detecting coercion was difficult and possibly beyond the competence even of judges and that in Canada, the expansion of Assisted Dying had come about as a legal process, courts, not Parliament, deciding that restrictions violated the rights of those the legislation had deemed ineligible.
One might, therefore, expect that as part of the Parliamentary process, measures might have been added to the Bill to assuage the legitimate concerns of opponents. In reality, the opposite happened. Practicality has dictated that judges be removed from the panels (so many would need to be involved that the original proposal would see the court system grind to a halt). An amendment to insist that all those who had an interest in the individual (i.e. family members) were informed was not debated. It emerged that the bill’s supporters did not even know whether anorexia was covered by the law. The debate wrapped up after just four and a half hours, and only two of the 150 amendments were put to the vote.
Rather than assuage opponents’ concerns, the debate merely increased them, adding to the feeling that the legislation has taken an “it will be alright on the night” approach. It has never, for example, been clear who will pay for the procedure.
The more questions are asked, the fewer answers there are. Which is why so many media outlets and organisations such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists have come out in opposition to the legislation, whatever their view of Assisted Dying in principle.
This push-back has not been met head-on. Supporters of the bill have, instead, chosen to attack their opponents’ motives, Esther Rantzen, dedicating her declining years to becoming the fairy godmother of death-on-demand, denouncing their “undeclared personal religious beliefs”. Quite how a corporate body such as the Royal College can have a personal belief escapes me for the moment, but then again, I didn’t present That’s Life…
One can see where they are coming from. Reducing suffering is a noble aim. We put down dogs every day, why should we spare them pain, but not ourselves? The expansion of choice is generally to be welcomed. The arc of history has, for the past several centuries bent towards increasing freedom. These things are self-evident, so self-evident that failing to see them must be intentional, the product of malign motives or out-dated thought.
Or perhaps the issue is more complex than its proponents assume. Extending the freedom to choose assisted dying to the terminally ill removes the freedom from having to choose it that all currently enjoy, and the freedom from perceived compulsion which the vulnerable, as Diane Abbott (not-notably religious) pointed out, may be less able to resist. What are the potential consequences of the state getting into the death business, not only in terms of the relationship between doctors and patients, but also in terms of our view of the value of human life? These are important questions but they are not easy questions, nor are they questions to which there is only one answer. The hallmark of a first-rate intelligence, Fitzgerald said, is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, not to claim that only one is valid, just or compassionate.
“Never be the smartest person in the room” is one of those pieces of advice the internet regularly throws up to young thrusters looking to “level up” – some of us, of course, have no choice…It is not, however, advice the bills proponents have taken to heart. For most have argued that the safeguards, slight as they were and watered down as they have been, will be sufficient to prevent abuse (some have adopted an omelette/eggs approach – laudable for its transparency if not for its humanity). They assume that they are clever enough to have spotted all the potential loop-holes and closed them. Just as every government assumes when it announces a new tax. But, as every accountant knows, give people an incentive and they will find a way around the law.
We might be willing to tolerate the loss of a few pounds to the Exchequer, but that is no reason to tolerate needless and unwanted deaths to accommodate the wishes of those who seek assistance in dying. Their concerns are real, their suffering is real but so is that of those who, inevitably, will be helped on their way before their time, against their true wishes. “A lot of men died for that medal” says a character in For Your Eyes Only of his sworn enemy. A lot of people will die before their time for the satisfaction of those who promote assisted dying. How many must suffer for them to get what they want? The whole Balkans were not, to Bismark, worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier.
How many needlessly truncated lives are Dame Esther and her sinister allies’ comfort and dignity worth?
Given all that we know about ourselves, it is, I think, a brilliant policy. For a completely different species. We have, we are told, a serious, sober politics yet we base bin policy on what we know, and life-and-death policy on what we hope. Is there really more wisdom in a single park ranger than in a majority of the House of Commons?
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.