The Assisted Dying Bill
and compassion demonstrate that the benefits for the applicants of physician-assisted suicide do not differentiate based on how long they are projected to live.
Having said that, the logic of both arguments has one crucial flaw. The reasoning behind restricting PAS to terminal cases is not just because they may benefit more from death, but also because the consequences of wrongfully euthanizing someone who is non-terminally ill are far more severe. In the introduction, we established that there should always be a limit on who should be eligible for the Assisted Dying Bill, as otherwise there rises a danger that people will be euthanized either without their consent or without a good reason for doing so. A doctor mistakenly prescribing lethal medication to a terminally ill applicant whose diagnosis is not very severe is still definitely wrong, but at least the patient would not have lived for much longer regardless. However, someone wrongfully passing with 20 or 30 years of their life left could potentially have disastrous repercussions. One example of this is Romy, a Dutch 22-year-old woman with clinical depression who realized at the very last minute on her hospice bed that she was not ready to die (Buchanan, 2024). While Romy was fortunate enough to have spoken up before the lethal injection, there will be similar cases where the patient changed their mind against active euthanasia but will have been euthanized, nonetheless. Minority and mentally-ill groups will in particular be vulnerable as they may struggle to express themselves. There will be those who in the moment feel like they are ready to die, but in a year’s time will have changed their mind, and extending the Bill may lead to them losing their will to persevere and find meaning in life again. Therefore, while Rachels and Mill are right in saying that the benefits of assisted dying are the same regardless of whether illness is terminal, they forget to consider that the implications of legalizing PAS for the non-terminally ill are far more dangerous. Moreover, while the argument from vagueness does not fall at the same hurdle, its reasoning still has problems. Virtually no regulation can provide perfect assurance. For example, civil commitment statutes often specify that the person in question must be a ‘danger’ to others. But how does anyone know what constitutes a danger? And yet judges have the capacity to make a ruling on whether someone should be placed into a treatment facility. Even statutes with great precision are not perfect. A speed limit of 50 miles an hour may be interpreted differently by drivers depending on traffic or weather conditions. And yet no one can deny that humanity on the whole is better off for having civil commitment statutes or speed limits. Ultimately, you cannot make the argument that everyone should be allowed euthanasia just because we cannot perfectly define who has a terminal illness and who does not. And therefore, the arguments from compassion, euthanasia and vagueness all fail to successfully justify why PAS should also be legalized for those with non-terminal but degenerative diseases. In conclusion, throughout this dissertation we have used data, real-world case studies and ethical arguments to explore whether non-terminally ill individuals should be prescribed euthanasia under the proposed Assisted Dying Bill. At first glance, there is an argument to be made for the Bill’s extension. Looking at the data, public sentiment in the UK is generally in favour of assisted dying for those suffering from severe but non-terminal physical illnesses, with 63% of respondents to the Nuffield survey agreeing that they should be given the opportunity to apply for physician assisted suicide (Nuffield Bioethics, pp 31). Furthermore, medics in the UK have remained neutral on the concept of assisted dying for the non- terminally ill, despite historically being against the suggestion as part of their commitment to honouring the Hippocratic Oath.
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