Tuesday, Apr 30, 2002
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By Hasan Suroor
Forty-three-year-old Ms. Diane Pretty, who is dying from a debilitating motor neuron disease and is paralysed from the neck down, is confined to a wheelchair. She speaks with the help of a machine and is physically incapable of doing anything on her own. She says she wants to die with dignity rather than live in perpetual agony, and her lawyer argued that her right to an assisted death was consistent with the Human Rights Convention. which outlaws "inhuman or degrading treatment''. She turned to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg after losing her case, first in the British High Court and then in the House of Lords. Despite her poor condition she travelled to Strasbourg in an ambulance to be present at the hearing which was her last hope of legal approval of what she insists is her right to die with dignity. Her plea was that her husband, Brian, be given immunity from prosecution if she chooses to seek his assistance to commit suicide. Disappointment was writ large on her face as the judgement was read out, and campaigners for voluntary euthanasia who have been supporting her case said it was inconsistent with the spirit of the human rights convention. They said they would press the British government for a review of the existing legal provisions which permitted selective voluntary euthanasia. ``There are lots of circumstances in which this is allowed and doctors are permitted to switch off life-supporting systems,'' one expert of medical ethics said. The irony in this case, she said, was that if Ms. Pretty had been in a position to commit suicide there was nothing the law could have done. But because she was seeking another person's help to do it, it was deemed illegal. Pro-euthanasia activists pointed out that assisted suicides were not uncommon but they were done quietly and therefore nobody knew about them outside the family. Because of its unusual nature, the case has been in the headlines for months and if Ms. Pretty had won her plea it would have been a huge victory for the proponents of the idea of right- to-die with dignity.
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