AMENDMENTS

TO BE MOVED

IN COMMITTEE

After Clause 6

THE BARONESS KNIGHT OF COLLINTREE

Insert the following new Clause—

"Provision of appropriate food and drink

(1) Part 4 of the 1983 Act is amended as follows.

(2) In section 58(1)(b) after "medicine" in the first line the words ", but excluding the provision of food and drink," is added.

(3) After section 58(1)(b) the following paragraph is inserted— "(c) the provision of adequate food and drink to a patient."

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DOCTORS TO FACE PRISON FOR DENYING RIGHT TO DIE

DAILY MAIL (London)
November 18, 2006 Saturday

By Steve Doughty

DOCTORS could be charged with assault if they keep alive patients who have made 'living wills' for treatment to be stopped.

Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer has warned that new laws will effectively require them to end lives rather than save them.

Doctors who decline to do so could face jail or claims for compensation.

The warning was issued in advance of the Mental Capacity Act coming into operation next spring. It raises the prospect that family or friends who have a financial interest in the death of a patient could sue a doctor who refuses to let them die.

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17th November 2006

Commenting on "A guide for people who work in health and social care", issued by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, a spokesman for ALERT said today:

"The Government has outlined a one-way street towards death.

"This was created when the Appeal Court reversed the Munby judgment in the Leslie Burke case, at the behest of the Department of Health, and was codified in the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

"Patients' advance decisions must be respected if they refused treatment, but need not be heeded if assisted feeding and hydration ('treatment'), are requested. If there is no advance directive, the patient may still be deprived of fluid in his or her 'best interests'.

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Bobby Schindler's response to Michael Shelden's interview with Michael Schiavo, Daily Telgraph, 30 October 2006.

Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
5562 Central Avenue, Suite 2
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
727-490-7603
www.terrisfight.org

November 1, 2006

Dear Mr. Shelton,

As a way of introduction, I am Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother. I am writing you regarding your article, 'Her soul had gone, her body was ready', which contains many inaccuracies. It is my understanding that the substance for this article was obtained from your interview with Michael Schiavo.

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Story from BBC News. Read the original article here.

Questions have been raised after claims that a hospital consultant told an inquest patients were dying "all the time" of dehydration.

The inquest has been looking into the death of Olive Nockels, 91, who died after being admitted to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital after a fall in 2003.

The barrister for Mrs Nockels' family, Christopher McNicholas, told BBC Look East that consultant Dr David Maisey said patients died of dehydration about two to three times a week.

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View the original here.

An Open Letter to Michael Schiavo

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, and an eyewitness to Terri Schiavo’s final hours, released the following open letter to Michael Schiavo tonight. Fr. Pavone will read it to a worldwide audience on an internationally broadcast religious service on Sunday morning, March 26.

A year ago this week, I stood by the bedside of the woman you married and promised to love in good times and bad, in sickness and health. She was enduring a very bad time, because she hadn’t been given food or drink in nearly two weeks. And you were the one insisting that she continue to be deprived of food and water, right up to her death. I watched her face for hours on end, right up to moments before her last breath. Her death was not peaceful, nor was it beautiful. If you saw her too, and noticed what her eyes were doing, you know that to describe her last agony as peaceful is a lie.

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We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors

Daily Mail (London)
Copyright 2006 Associated Newspapers Ltd
November 6, 2006 Monday

STEVE DOUGHTY

A DOCTORS' group called for a debate on the mercy killing of disabled babies yesterday.

The medical profession should examine the 'active euthanasia' of desperately ill newborns, said the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology.

It wants an inquiry into whether the 'deliberate intervention to cause the death of an infant' should be legalised.

The proposal met with a furious response from some quarters last night.

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Dr. Richard Lamerton, Medical Director, Hospice of the Valleys, South Wales

If you give someone rights, it means someone else has a duty. A right to die means someone has a duty to kill. If doctors do this:

1. As in Holland, doctors would lose their patients' trust.
2. As the habit of killing catches on, the voluntary element is lost. Patients in Holland are having to carry cards saying "Please, doctor, DON'T kill me.."
3. The ways open to doctors for killing are not always effective. To be paralysed but still conscious, or not to die as expected, are distinct risks - all drugs sometimes fail.

When the question was being debated in the House of Lords a doctor, knowing these limitations, asked a Dutch doctor giving evidence "What you do when the patient doesn't die first time?" The gruesome details in the reply were a major factor in deciding the committee against euthanasia. Don't be dazzled by the words "death with dignity".

What would be much kinder, quicker and surer would be a bullet in the head. Doctors should be left out of this altogether. Policemen could do the killings, or undertakers, or social workers.

I have considerable sympathy for Mrs. Pretty - Motor Neurone Disease is awful. But having looked after dozens of people with the condition, I would hate to endorse Mrs. Pretty's message of despair. Some patients despair, but most do not. Most find new depths in relationships, new meanings in life, and enough reasons to go on living. But they do need skilled care - I hope Mrs. Pretty is getting help from a good Hospice with experience in this kind of care.

But if we make it legal to kill her, some very dangerous consequences would follow.

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Let's just remind ourselves what Lord Joffe said when answering Question 89 on THURSDAY 16 SEPTEMBER 2004. Lord Joffe:

"I have been criticised by many people who have supported the principle of assisted dying over the fact that in their view the Bill does not go far enough, that it should go a great deal further, and that many of the safeguards are not necessary. I feel, however, that we are starting off; this is a first stage

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