Better Off Dead, BBC1, BBC iPlayer, Presenter and Writer Liz Carr, Director James Routh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z8wc/better-off-dead

I’m for assisted dying. What I fear is dementia. I agree with much of what Liz Carr argues. The slippery-slope argument. We live in separate worlds. But we all die. The disabled, like her, in a capitalist economy are costly and don’t die quickly enough for some.

Boris Johnson’s comments, while Prime Minister, during Covid-19, ‘Let the bodies pile high,’ related to those older and in geriatric care, repulsed many, but others nodded their head in agreement. A price worth paying to keep a Conservative government in power.  

Wendy Mitchell, who suffers from dementia, suggests in her book, One Last Thing, ‘So often this book has come down to one word, “choice”.

She reminds us it’s no longer a criminal offence to kill yourself. Successful suicides weren’t prosecuted, then or now. Neither are those who attempt to take their own life.

But those assisting with suicide are prosecuted.  

‘Choice’ is one keyword.

Autonomy or self-rule another. The paradox of successive governments urging us to take better care of our health. Then those that want to make the leap to assisted dying, prosecuted by existing laws.

Control is the other keyword. Years ago, I remember watching a film starring Richard Dreyfuss. Whose Life is it Anyway?    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whose_Life_Is_It_Anyway%3F_(film)

Carr picks apart the themes and ideology of a similar Hollywood movie, #MeWithoutYou.  She calls it a ‘disability snuff movie’. The underlying premise is, like Whose Life is it Anyway? the best thing to do is die. Everyone will be better off without the disabled person and the world will be a better place. But we can dress it up as choice and play sad music over the soundtrack to make us feel uplifted about the inevitability of such endings.  

Carr’s first appearance on Newsnight, 2008.

‘If a non-disabled person wants to commit suicide it’s a tragedy…If it’s a disabled person, it’s a relief.’

 

There’s more than a hint of eugenics here. The Nazis with their state sanctioned murders of ‘Life unworthy of life’. Normalising what was considered abnormal. Creating the conditions that some lives become intolerable. The euthanasia of disabled people works by shutting off resources. Increasing immiserating.

For example, Canadian citizen, Amir Fasoud, struggling to survive on state benefits. Disabled. Unable to pay rent on his flat which was double what he qualified for every month. He told his doctor he was applying for MAID for socioeconomic reasons. His doctor approved him for the fast-track option based on a 90-day assessment. He can then be euthanized.   

Key words here. Choice. His were limited. Control. He lacked the resources to make choice and therefore lacked autonomy. Push factors. He was Better Off Dead, because he couldn’t pay his rent. Being poor was one thing. Being disabled another. Here they were conflated, with euthanasia offered as the only escape route.

I support the Assisted Dying Bill, going through the House of Lords, but I’m not stupid enough to believe the main casualties will be those without power and the poorest in our society. Safeguards will little more than political lip synch. But even that will be limited progress.   

 

NOTES.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/26/labour-leg...

A documentary on assisted suicide, authored by actor and disability rights activist Liz Carr. 

We may be used to seeing Liz in dramas such as Silent Witness, Good Omens or The Witcher, but now she’s stepping away from the spotlight to pursue her greatest passion – debating why she believes we shouldn’t legalise assisted suicide. As a long-term campaigner against that change, Liz fears disabled lives will be put at risk if the law is altered. 

Travelling to Canada, Liz explores the repercussions of some of the most permissive assisted suicide laws in the world. Here Liz is confronted with a law that can end the lives of not just the terminally ill but people who are disabled and those who are offered a medically assisted death as a ‘way out’ of social deprivation. 

Back in the UK, Liz meets influential voices calling for a change in the law, such as Labour peer Lord Falconer and Sunday Times columnist Melanie Reid. She also meets fellow campaigners fighting to retain the status quo, including disabled peer Baroness Jane Campbell, who had a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order placed on her for a routine illness without consent. 

In a society where disabled people are often told they are ‘better off dead’ than disabled, Liz asks: ‘Should we really be giving more power to end that group of people’s lives?’ 

I prefer to call it what it is: Assisted Suicide.

If you think this is just about terminal illness. Think again. This is about disability. And for me, and others, that is terrifying.

[slippery-slope argument]

There have been many documentaries on this subject. But not one from disabled people like me. 

I’m not religious. I’m just really afraid of these laws. This is just an attempt to redress that balance.

These laws will put lives like mine. Marginalised lives at risk. Those risks will be fatal.

All under the dangerous assumption some of us are better off dead.

It’s all Me Before You. Attractive, rich young male has an accident. Falls in love with his carer. And like all good rom-coms goes off to Digitalis (Switzerland) to die.

Telling her: ‘The world will definitely be a better place without me’.

Translated as I don’t want you to look after me…

I’m going to leave you some money.

You go off and live a life (marry a footballer).

2016> Rights not tragedy #Me Before You is not a romance. It’s a disability snuff movie, giving the audience the message that if you’re a disabled person you’re better off dead.

It’s the glorification of the right thing to do. The best thing to do for our families and society.

800 Brits on the waiting list for Digitalis. Britons make up 1in 5 visitors to assisted dying clinics.

‘Paralysed young sportsmen hated his life.’  

‘She’s a prisoner of her own body…’

First appearance on Newsnight 2008.

‘If a non-disabled person wants to commit suicide it’s a tragedy…If it’s a disabled person, it’s a relief.’

Person standing on a bridge argument.

Two-tier system. Suicide prevention for some. Suicide approval for others (disabled).

I’ve not always been disabled. But my experience of becoming so, may explain my views.

Yes, it’s that time in the documentary where I go and visit my mum. [Pat Carr]

March 1981. Started back at school. Diary.

Age 7, diagnosed with autoimmune condition.

November 1984. Very down. Very lonely. Want to die because she can’t see any future.

I wish I could go back in time and tell her (me) I’d found my tribe. Other people with disabilities and activism.

I saw disability in a completely different way. As the barriers in society and not me as the problem.

 Baroness Jane Campbell. Campaign Group: Not Dead Yet.

We want to keep the current law, which sees assisted suicide as a criminal offence. Rather than a medical treatment.

In the past 20 years there have been eight attempts to change the law.

In the House of Lords, Lord Falconer has sponsored four Bills that allows those with six-months or less to live—to die.

The Line in the sand argument. Shifts. As shown by the experience in Canada.

Assisted Suicide. When your supplied with lethal medication you can take yourself.

Euthanasia. When  a doctor assists you.

Legalised in 2016.

Government funded through the public-health system. ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’.  [MAID]

Meeting Doctor Ellen Wiebe who has performed hundreds of euthanasias. Over 400.

The number one reason is not losing CONTROL.

What you’re saying is to protect a group of people you see at risk, you’ll condemn another group of people to unbearable suffering…I’m so glad that I’m Canadian and people can choose that. Or not choose that. But to say someone has to suffer like that it simply, cruel.

Do you love your job?

Yes, I do.

In the first year 1000 people ended their life with MAID. The annual figure jumped to 13000, six years’ later.

Saving the public-health system, hundreds of millions of dollars. [potentially]

2 pathways for accessing MAID. [Medical Assistance in Dying]

i) terminally ill. (fast) assessed and euthanized in 24 hours.

ii) Since 2021. Medical condition ‘unbearable suffering’.  ‘Death not reasonably forseeable’. Assessment period 90 days.

Both safeguard, need signed off by two medical professionals.

Normal part of Canadian medical system. Eg medical 24-hour suicide-prevention programme. 24-hour-MAID programme.

Stories are emerging that MAID is being chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with health.

Eg Amir Fasoud, struggling to survive on state benefits. Disabled. Unable to pay rent on flat which was double what he qualified for every month. He told his doctor he was applying for MAID for socioeconomic reasons. His doctor approved him for the fast-track option based on a 90-day assessment. He can then be euthanized.

In contrast, social housing can wait a decade.

I had a date. I was marking time (until my death). Cythia Mulliagan (reporter) interviewed him. Headline: Death over homelessness.

Fundraising, Toronto. In four days raised 60 000 dollars.

If it wasn’t for her I’d have died at the end of November last year.  

Amir could be euthanized because he’s disabled and poor. Not everyone can because they’re suffering from poverty.

In the future, MAID will be available for people with mental-health conditions. And, as if it couldn’t get any worse, a Parliamentary Committee recommends extending the law to mature minors. That could mean children as young as 12. The age I was when I first said I wanted to die.

Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, most of Australia. 11 US states. Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Columbia. Still, overall, available to a minority of the global population. However, in many of these countries, the law applies to disabled people.

It’s not just me and a few friends that are worried about what would happen if we open the door to assisted suicide here in the UK.

Dr Kathreen Sleeman, Professor Palliative Care.  Those most opposed to assisted dying is those that work with the most vulnerable in society, which includes geriatric care.

The big concern for me is safety. Those vulnerable people coerced into assisted dying are protected from that. Coercion does happen, definitely.

Safeguards will not make it safe. So the question we should be asking, is how safe?

Scotland. Not all disabled people agree with me on this subject.

Melanie Reid, journalist who pushes for a change in the law (eg headline: ‘Ignore the noisy few who oppose assisted dying, 2014). 

She became disabled after a horse-riding accident about a decade ago.

I was 52 and I was catapulted into extreme disability.

Recent events have shown me that some people are shown as less valuable and vulnerable. Covid-19. It felt that as a country we were divided into those that were worth saving and those that had underlying health conditions, who weren’t. We heard of those with Covid being sent into care homes. Of blanket: DO NOT RESUCITATE notices being placed inappropriately. Of old and disabled people being based on what they could and couldn’t do. And when you find yourself in that group…

It seemed, older, ill and disabled people became collateral damage.  As an older disabled woman with underlying health conditions, I was more likely to die from Covid, but I was just as scared of dying from inequality.

I’m not sure we should be giving more power to end those people’s lives?

bbc.co.uk/betteroffdead (Open University)

Presented and written by Liz Carr.

Filmed, produced and directed by James Routh.