Not Dead Yet UK Earns Media Coverage In “Big Issue”

Our good friends at Not Dead Yet UK got some significant coverage including photos in the Big Issue publication last month. Big Issue Group describes itself as media and other “initiatives under a shared mission to create innovative solutions through enterprise, to unlock social and economic opportunity for the millions of people in the UK living in poverty.”

The article is entitled “Assisted dying: The right to die shouldn’t only be for the rich. But could legalising it harm the poor?” It fairly extensively covers both sides of the issue. Below are the NDY UK excerpts from the text:

Dennis Queen, a member of Not Dead Yet UK, says: “We want people to help us campaign for equal rights to live in the first place, not to be subjected to brutal systems that make us suicidal. I lost a friend 18 months ago to suicide mostly because of problems with the benefits service.

“It’s not that I don’t think people will opt for this. I’m worried that people will be lining up in their droves because of neglect. There is no way we can avoid that through a safeguard. So while that is the case, it’s not safe to talk about assisted suicide.”

It is an argument echoed by politicians on both sides of the spectrum. Jeremy Corbyn has advocated against it, arguing that he is “concerned that it would be open to abuse and put the most vulnerable people at risk”.

Sir Stephen Timms, Labour MP and chair of the work and pensions committee, wrote in Labour List last month: “People with disabilities, the poor and those who fear being a burden are all at risk when assisted suicide is permitted, while investing in high-quality palliative care, which is harder to access for the impoverished, can easily be marginalised when assisted suicide is allowed.”

Queen is a wheelchair user and lives with severe chronic pain which can only be relieved by morphine, and she suffers from incontinence. “My treatment plan now is to up the morphine until I die,” she says.

There have been times where she has felt suicidal and she still struggles with her mental health, but she has three children and a support system and she is grateful to be alive.

“I’m doing a lot better now,” she says. “I had the right help and my life is getting back on track. I’m starting to feel better every day. I know acutely what difference the right support makes.”

Queen has lost trust in the systems meant to protect disabled people, and she does not believe the government is capable of legalising assisted dying while still protecting the vulnerable.

Phil Friend, a disability rights campaigner and co-convenor of Not Dead Yet UK, admits there are times he has felt like a “burden” to his wife. He has had a successful career and a happy life, and he knows that his wife would hate to hear him speak like that, but it is his truth.

Friend says: “If you change this law, you make disabled people vulnerable. And that’s not right. We shouldn’t weaken laws that are there to protect people.”

Friend admits that in cases such as Norman’s [a man with cancer described in the article], it is hard to argue that he should not have had access to assisted dying, but he believes there must be a proper safety net in place to protect vulnerable people before assisted dying is an option.

Those fighting for assisted dying to be legalised believe it is possible to build a system with proper safeguards in place, arguing that people would never be approved purely due to social issues.

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People on both sides of the debate agree that vulnerable people must be protected. Some believe assisted dying is the kindest option while others believe that legalising it would put the vulnerable at risk. Some argue that it would let the government off the hook, while others say it would be a wake-up call.

Friend says: “If you could convince me that the safeguards were in place – that the right palliative care and social care had been done and there was no way of relieving somebody’s pain and suffering, having done all of that, then there might be a case of saying okay.

“But we haven’t even got close to providing any of that. Our national health service, as you well know, is falling to bits. Social care is pretty non existent. The benefits system is a mess. So people are making decisions based on having nothing.

“They believe it’s better to die. And yet we know that if you give people the right accommodation, the right social care support, the right palliative medicine, they do not talk about ending their lives. They talk about living their lives.”