Good evening all :)
Tony Nicklinson died yesterday and I thought I'd write a short post about him as he's someone I've been so incredibly in awe of for the past few months. For anyone who doesn't know, Tony Nicklinson was a man suffering from 'locked in syndrome', basically, he was paralysed from the neck down and could only communicate by blinking. He had been battling in court to let doctors take his life for some time but lost his court battle a few days ago. He then refused food, got pneumonia and died.
As I've probably mentioned before I am a staunch believer in euthanasia and in people having the right to die whenever they should choose, not when the state decides. No human being should ever have to resort to starving themself to death. Can you even begin to imagine what that's like? Can you even begin to imagine what living Tony Nicklinson's life was like? No, you can't. As always it's people who have never been in these situations making the decisions. I remember the days when I couldn't walk or use my legs and that was so so hard and I'm not even so much as 1% as incapacitated as he was and I can't even begin to imagine anything. I remember going from being a normal, active person like he was to someone who had to be wheelchaired to the toilet, it's a horrible experience however you look at it. I'm lucky that I've got better, but if I ever got something degenerative (or indeed had a stroke) then the only thing in the world that I would want is to know that should there come a time when I want to die then I wouldn't be denied it.
I know there are a lot of counter arguments, especially ones about disabled and ill people feeling like a burden and worries about the law being exploited. But you can't deny a majority of people something because a minority will abuse it. Alcohol is a perfect (if not much less serious) example, 95% of people use it properly, and for the 5% who don't there is strict policing, support groups and many convictions. Of course I only support it in the most extreme cases. And for people who say only god should choose when we die and we're interfering with his will? That's the silliest thing ever, if you say that then all medical treatment is interfering with 'his will'. It's like abortion, of course some people won't agree with it but just because you don't it doesn't give you the right to deny it to other people.
The problem is that people just don't want to talk about death and these issues are never really raised. He's only been dead for a day and it's already out of the news. If I ran the world then everyone would have to have made plans for things like this, there would be a law that you had to state your wishes when you turned 18. Whether you'd want keeping alive if you were in a coma, if you were completely paralysed, your will, your funeral arrangements, all these things that we spend so much time trying to avoid. If I ran the world then when you felt like your time was damn well up then your time could damn bloody well be up.
People talk about euthanasia like if we allow it then there will be queues of people all waiting like cattle to be shot. It's an extreme treatment for extreme cases, it's not something we should start doing to people with an especially bad cold, it's for people at the end of a long, painful battle with cancer and things like that, people who deserve to have some dignity in their last days instead of dragging it all out into some godawful depressing traumatic scene. I do believe that the law will be changed, especially the law on assisted suicide as people slowly realise that it's not our choice when someone else will die.
Apologies for the not so jolly subject, it's just an issue that's very close to my heart. What I'm basically trying to say is RIP Tony Nicklinson, you've proved to the world that disabled people make a very big splash in a very big pond. And that no matter what your situation, you can always make something positive. I'd like to slap his story around the face of any hooded gangster who claim they can't make themselves into anything.
It's just weird. The only thing keeping him alive was trying to die. And when he was told he wasn't allowed die, he no longer had a reason to live, and with that another bright flame was extinguished.
Constanze :)
Thursday, 23 August 2012
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A very good and respectful post from you. Sadly everyone will continue to shy away from this issue. The Courts and Judges won't rule for it, because it's against the Law and it's up to Parliament to change the Law. Parliament won't even debate it because they're terrified of the Moral Minority in their constituencies. The Government won't touch it with a bargepole because it's a potential vote-loser. And of course the Religious Right are totally against it because suicide and murder are both sins. The only thing that can be done is for the Courts to be lenient in cases where someone has assisted suicide, but no matter how much I wanted to die, I wouldn't want to risk my relatives being prosecuted for murder by helping me. Of course you can take your own life, but sadly by the time you get to the stage where you want to, it's because you're so ill that you're actually incapable of doing it on your own. Tony took the only way out that he was still capable of doing - voluntary starvation. But that's no damn way to go, and it's far crueler than being given a drink that lets you quietly and painfully slip away. Another example of a Caring Society that actually Doesn't Care.
ReplyDeleteI've heard lots of people saying how scared of dying they were. I doubt people is scared of being death, as if you are religious you think you're leaving for a better place and if not that there's nothing afterwards. Death is difficult for the ones left behind, not for the person who dies.
ReplyDeleteWe are all scared of the process of dying, the pain, the helplessness. Maybe if there was the option to take a shortcoming through that, we wouldn't be as terrified about death as we are.