Let Reason Prevail
Here's an admirable opinion piece on assisted dying by Chris Woodhead in The Sunday Times which is full of life and good humour while getting to the heart of a serious issue in a calm and reasonable manner.
The subject matter is given even greater weight with two poignant photographs of Chris Woodhead - one illustrating his great love of climbing, the other showing him in his present wheelchair bound state where the combative education reformer argues passionately that reason should prevail.
I agree with him wholeheartedly.
Please help me to let go
Rock-climber, fell-walker, combative education reformer — Chris Woodhead has led an active life. But now he has a terminal illness and seeks only a peaceful exit. Some want to deny him this — and to throw out Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill, which has its second reading this week. Here he mounts a passionate defence of his right to end his suffering
By Chris Woodhead - The Sunday Times
Now paralysed in a wheelchair, Chris Woodhead knows he will never see his beloved Verdon Gorge in France again (Harriet Logan)
It is not yet 9 o’clock, but the sun is already warm on my face. There is that Mediterranean certainty of real heat to come. When I shut my eyes I can dream I am standing on the rim of the Verdon Gorge in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, wondering whether to spend the day spread-eagled on the tendon-popping verticality of the white limestone cliffs or swimming in the blue-green water of the river 2,000ft below. In fact, I am sitting in my wheelchair in what used to be a Herefordshire farmyard.
A red kite hangs motionless in the sky. There is a commotion in the open barn opposite me as swallows slice through the air to confront a magpie that has had the audacity to strut, backwards and forwards, arrogant and indifferent, on the floor beneath their nests. A poppy has appeared from nowhere, the pinkish red of its petals complementing perfectly the creamy yellow stamens. Somewhere, in the distance, a cockerel crows.
There is an occasional whiff from the septic tank. A wasp circles my head malevolently. It is not Provence and it is not paradise. But there is nowhere I would rather be. It is as close to Eden as a quadriplegic is likely to get.
When, eight years ago, I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), I didn’t think I would still be around in 2014. I remember my consultant saying that if there was anything I particularly wanted to do, it might be an idea to get on with it fairly quickly. Fifty per cent of people with MND die within 14 months of the diagnosis; 90% are dead within five years.
I don’t, incidentally, think my survival has anything to do with, in the words beloved of obituarists, my “courageous struggle” with the illness. It has been, like so much else in life, a matter of luck. Someone has decided that I deserve a little longer in the sun or, depending on how you look at it, that the misery should be prolonged.
It is not yet 9 o’clock, but the sun is already warm on my face. There is that Mediterranean certainty of real heat to come. When I shut my eyes I can dream I am standing on the rim of the Verdon Gorge in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, wondering whether to spend the day spread-eagled on the tendon-popping verticality of the white limestone cliffs or swimming in the blue-green water of the river 2,000ft below. In fact, I am sitting in my wheelchair in what used to be a Herefordshire farmyard.
A red kite hangs motionless in the sky. There is a commotion in the open barn opposite me as swallows slice through the air to confront a magpie that has had the audacity to strut, backwards and forwards, arrogant and indifferent, on the floor beneath their nests. A poppy has appeared from nowhere, the pinkish red of its petals complementing perfectly the creamy yellow stamens. Somewhere, in the distance, a cockerel crows.
There is an occasional whiff from the septic tank. A wasp circles my head malevolently. It is not Provence and it is not paradise. But there is nowhere I would rather be. It is as close to Eden as a quadriplegic is likely to get.
When, eight years ago, I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND), I didn’t think I would still be around in 2014. I remember my consultant saying that if there was anything I particularly wanted to do, it might be an idea to get on with it fairly quickly. Fifty per cent of people with MND die within 14 months of the diagnosis; 90% are dead within five years.
I don’t, incidentally, think my survival has anything to do with, in the words beloved of obituarists, my “courageous struggle” with the illness. It has been, like so much else in life, a matter of luck. Someone has decided that I deserve a little longer in the sun or, depending on how you look at it, that the misery should be prolonged.
Now paralysed in a wheelchair, Chris Woodhead knows he will never see his beloved Verdon Gorge in France again
The historian Tony Judt, who died of MND in 2010, compared his experience of the illness to being locked in a prison cell that shrank by six inches every day. It is a good analogy. But, actually, over the past couple of years, my physical condition has not changed very much.
I am more twisted in my wheelchair and my head falls a little more grotesquely to one side. The hotel we use in London has mirrors in the lift: I make sure I keep my eyes tightly closed. I can no longer move the cursor about on the computer screen, but that’s about it.
The bad news for me came last autumn, when I was taken into the local hospital with a high temperature, to be told that I had colon cancer and, for good measure, some rather large stones in my left kidney.
When my eldest granddaughter came to visit, she looked at me rather solemnly and remarked that I was in the wars and that it wasn’t fair. Deep down I agreed with her. MND ought to be enough for one lifetime. But life isn’t fair and it doesn’t help to indulge in infantile fantasies that it should be. I have survived more scrapes than I care to remember in the mountains, and I walked away pretty well unscathed from a serious car crash.You can’t be lucky all the time.
The main problem, it seemed, with the cancer and the kidney stones was whether I would survive the general anaesthetic. As far as I was concerned, there really wasn’t a decision to make. I did not want to drag out the time I had left feeling as wretched as I was. If I recovered from the operations then I would presumably feel better; if I didn’t, they could switch off the life support machine. I had a battery of tests and the doctors came to the conclusion that the risks were worth taking.
So the operations went ahead. They cut the cancer out and, mercifully, it hadn’t spread. A month later, the kidney stones were dispatched and, though that precipitated a few feverish days as infection flooded through me, all is for now well on that front too. Lady Luck had, once again, turned her kindly face upon me.
On Friday, Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill will have its second reading in parliament. This bill proposes that anyone who has a terminal illness, who is judged by two doctors to have less than six months to live, and who is mentally competent to determine the timing of their own death, can be given life-ending medication that they must administer themselves.
Falconer argues, rightly, that, because his bill focuses so categorically on the terminally ill, it would not legalise assisted suicide for everyone. The elderly and the disabled, for example, are not included in his proposals. Neither would it legalise voluntary euthanasia, because the individual would have to self-administer the medication. In other words, this is a small, very cautious attempt to clarify an area of the law that is currently opaque and that would give anyone in my situation a peace of mind we do not at present have.
The latest survey conducted by the campaigning group Dignity in Dying shows that 80% of the public believes the law should be clarified in the way Falconer wants. Does this mean his bill will be passed on the nod? No, far from it. There are those in both houses of parliament who believe they have a moral duty to prolong my suffering to its perhaps imperfect palliative end.
What irritates me is the presumption. We all know intellectually that we are going to die. When the consultant sitting across the table has told you that in all probability you have not long to live, that your muscles will waste away and that breathing and swallowing may well become progressively more difficult, the reality of that death has an emotional impact that nobody in good health can understand.
One opponent of the bill has said there is no need for the law to be changed because if the terminally ill wish to die more quickly than nature intends they can starve and dehydrate themselves to death. I was told by a doctor that if I was to choose this way out then no medical assistance to alleviate my suffering would be offered to me.
It is an option that at some point I may have to choose to take. It is an option I considered last winter. I would prefer a swifter and more comfortable end. Who wouldn’t?
Why does anyone think they have the right to deny those who are terminally ill a peaceful and dignified exit? Or, what is equally important, the reassurance of knowing there is a way out if the suffering becomes too great?
The argument, of course, is that the slope is slippery. The truth is that in Oregon, where assisted death is legal, fewer than 80 people out of the 30,000 who died in 2013 asked a doctor to assist their end. I simply do not believe that people in the UK are more wicked than people in Oregon.
The historian Tony Judt, who died of MND in 2010, compared his experience of the illness to being locked in a prison cell that shrank by six inches every day. It is a good analogy. But, actually, over the past couple of years, my physical condition has not changed very much.
I am more twisted in my wheelchair and my head falls a little more grotesquely to one side. The hotel we use in London has mirrors in the lift: I make sure I keep my eyes tightly closed. I can no longer move the cursor about on the computer screen, but that’s about it.
The bad news for me came last autumn, when I was taken into the local hospital with a high temperature, to be told that I had colon cancer and, for good measure, some rather large stones in my left kidney.
When my eldest granddaughter came to visit, she looked at me rather solemnly and remarked that I was in the wars and that it wasn’t fair. Deep down I agreed with her. MND ought to be enough for one lifetime. But life isn’t fair and it doesn’t help to indulge in infantile fantasies that it should be. I have survived more scrapes than I care to remember in the mountains, and I walked away pretty well unscathed from a serious car crash.You can’t be lucky all the time.
The main problem, it seemed, with the cancer and the kidney stones was whether I would survive the general anaesthetic. As far as I was concerned, there really wasn’t a decision to make. I did not want to drag out the time I had left feeling as wretched as I was. If I recovered from the operations then I would presumably feel better; if I didn’t, they could switch off the life support machine. I had a battery of tests and the doctors came to the conclusion that the risks were worth taking.
So the operations went ahead. They cut the cancer out and, mercifully, it hadn’t spread. A month later, the kidney stones were dispatched and, though that precipitated a few feverish days as infection flooded through me, all is for now well on that front too. Lady Luck had, once again, turned her kindly face upon me.
On Friday, Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill will have its second reading in parliament. This bill proposes that anyone who has a terminal illness, who is judged by two doctors to have less than six months to live, and who is mentally competent to determine the timing of their own death, can be given life-ending medication that they must administer themselves.
Falconer argues, rightly, that, because his bill focuses so categorically on the terminally ill, it would not legalise assisted suicide for everyone. The elderly and the disabled, for example, are not included in his proposals. Neither would it legalise voluntary euthanasia, because the individual would have to self-administer the medication. In other words, this is a small, very cautious attempt to clarify an area of the law that is currently opaque and that would give anyone in my situation a peace of mind we do not at present have.
The latest survey conducted by the campaigning group Dignity in Dying shows that 80% of the public believes the law should be clarified in the way Falconer wants. Does this mean his bill will be passed on the nod? No, far from it. There are those in both houses of parliament who believe they have a moral duty to prolong my suffering to its perhaps imperfect palliative end.
What irritates me is the presumption. We all know intellectually that we are going to die. When the consultant sitting across the table has told you that in all probability you have not long to live, that your muscles will waste away and that breathing and swallowing may well become progressively more difficult, the reality of that death has an emotional impact that nobody in good health can understand.
One opponent of the bill has said there is no need for the law to be changed because if the terminally ill wish to die more quickly than nature intends they can starve and dehydrate themselves to death. I was told by a doctor that if I was to choose this way out then no medical assistance to alleviate my suffering would be offered to me.
It is an option that at some point I may have to choose to take. It is an option I considered last winter. I would prefer a swifter and more comfortable end. Who wouldn’t?
Why does anyone think they have the right to deny those who are terminally ill a peaceful and dignified exit? Or, what is equally important, the reassurance of knowing there is a way out if the suffering becomes too great?
The argument, of course, is that the slope is slippery. The truth is that in Oregon, where assisted death is legal, fewer than 80 people out of the 30,000 who died in 2013 asked a doctor to assist their end. I simply do not believe that people in the UK are more wicked than people in Oregon.
Now paralysed in a wheelchair, Chris Woodhead knows he will never see his beloved Verdon Gorge in France again
I do not see how the safeguards that Falconer’s bill proposes could be easily overcome by anybody who wished to persuade a terminally ill person that they should die.
My suffering is not too great. The sun is still shining and the septic tank has stopped whiffing. The frame of my wheelchair is digging into my left shoulder blade and an insect has decided to crawl into my right ear. In other words, I’m struggling with life’s usual little irritations. But I could be on the Tube or stuck at Heathrow, gazing morosely at the departures board, or — heaven forbid — making yet another appearance before the Commons education select committee.
I would love to climb once more in the Verdon Gorge and to eat again in the square at Castellane, the little town that nestles under a huge rock at the entrance to the gorge. But I can’t. I never will. Instead, I have a mind well stocked with memories and the infinite beauty of my present surroundings. I am neither depressed nor angry. I am not emotional in any way. I simply want reason to prevail when Falconer’s bill has its second reading.
The swallows have returned. They are gathered in the sky and are swooping in and out of the barn. If birds can be angry, they are. Mr Magpie must be strutting his stuff.
Read Sian Griffiths interview with Chris Woodhead
I do not see how the safeguards that Falconer’s bill proposes could be easily overcome by anybody who wished to persuade a terminally ill person that they should die.
My suffering is not too great. The sun is still shining and the septic tank has stopped whiffing. The frame of my wheelchair is digging into my left shoulder blade and an insect has decided to crawl into my right ear. In other words, I’m struggling with life’s usual little irritations. But I could be on the Tube or stuck at Heathrow, gazing morosely at the departures board, or — heaven forbid — making yet another appearance before the Commons education select committee.
I would love to climb once more in the Verdon Gorge and to eat again in the square at Castellane, the little town that nestles under a huge rock at the entrance to the gorge. But I can’t. I never will. Instead, I have a mind well stocked with memories and the infinite beauty of my present surroundings. I am neither depressed nor angry. I am not emotional in any way. I simply want reason to prevail when Falconer’s bill has its second reading.
The swallows have returned. They are gathered in the sky and are swooping in and out of the barn. If birds can be angry, they are. Mr Magpie must be strutting his stuff.
Read Sian Griffiths interview with Chris Woodhead
