Life After Death

Euthanasia, she believes, could be achieved by approval of the withdrawal of treatment including 'assisted foods and fluid', and by making advance directives ('living wills') legally binding, or by continuing powers of attorney which could allow life-and-death decisions to be made by people with a vested interest. The role and responsibility of doctors in such a sophisticated drift towards euthanasia would, of course, be of critical significance. Recent shifts, therefore, in the stance of the British Medical Association (BMA) must be seen for what they are: the beginnings of a campaign to change doctors' views on medical killing. Until recently, the provision of food and fluids - including tubal feeding - was always regarded as part of basic care. Now, however, as was demonstrated in the case of Tony Bland the Hillsborough victim, assisted nutrition is defined as 'treatment' and can be withdrawn, allowing victims of disease and accident, handicapped children and the aged to be starved to death. The BMA certainly supports legally binding advance directives, claiming that under common law they are already recognised as such, and that doctors who ignore them could be charged with assault. A twoday mass lobby of Parliament in July 1998 attracted thousands of lobbyists from Scotland, England and Wales, representing about 450 constituencies. Lobbying concentrated on the two issues of legalising the withdrawal of food and fluids, and the dangers of making advance directives legally binding. Phyllis Bowman and SPUC Merseyside launched a separate anti-euthanasia initiative to spearhead multi-faith meetings throughout the country, to alert people of all faiths to their shared responsibility to fight euthanasia, to develop local multi-faith action and mobilise national religious bodies.

This is the first time that virtually all the Christian churches, Jews and Muslims have co-operated in such a campaign. The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, said that he would be proud to support it. Several meetings have already been held and more are planned. "Educating the churches has been a massive job," says Phyllis Bowman. "Withdrawing treatment sounds fairly innocent until you realise that it means starving people to death".

(Further details of ongoing campaigns and information on how you can help, are available from Phyllis Bowman: PO Box 25172 London SW1H 9JA.) l On 28 April 1999, Lord Alton introduced a short (2½ hour) debate in the House of Lords on human cloning. As a result, Baroness Hayman promised to "feed the transcript of the debate back into the consultation process". l On 25 June the Government announced that it was not yet confident enough to proceed, that it was re-constituting a new working group under the Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson which, it was hoped, would report back early in 2000. l The following pages relate part of that debate and the Government's subsequent delay in making a decision on human cloning.