Former British Prime Minister opposes assisted suicide law and calls for promoting palliative care

The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, has joined the debate on the assisted dying bill in England and Wales to point out that this is not the right path, but support for palliative care, the value of which he discovered in 2002 with the death of his newborn daughter.

In a column published in the newspaper The Guardianthe Labor politician referred to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Billwhich has divided the country and which the House of Commons will debate tomorrow, Friday.

“Jennifer, the little daughter my wife Sarah brought into the world a few days after Christmas 2001, died at 11 days old. On the fourth day, when the magnitude of his brain hemorrhage was diagnosed, we knew that there was no hope and that he had no chance of surviving,” he wrote.

“We could just sit with her, hold her little hand and be there for her as life faded away. He died in our arms. “But those days we spent with her remain some of the most precious of my and Sarah’s lives,” he said.

Later, Brown wrote: “The experience of being with a girl who was terminally ill did not convince me of the need for assisted dying, but rather it convinced me of the value and need for good end-of-life care.”

Brown, who was prime minister between 2007 and 2010, indicated that he and his wife feel compassion for terminally ill patients who fear the suffering that awaits them in their final months, days or even hours, and that they recognize that on “both sides of the debate” there is a concern “for all those who suffer painful deaths.”

However, “in my opinion, assisted dying is not the only option available, nor even a good option when compared to the palliative support that could be available to ensure a good death,” he said.

In that sense, in his column he remembered Cicely Saunders, the English nurse and social worker considered the pioneer of palliative care and whose life Brown portrayed in his book Courage.

“Saunders was shocked, and rightly so, by the marginalization of the so-called ‘incurables’ and by what she considered a neglect and betrayal by conventional medicine of the time. “His brave and revolutionary research and tireless campaign demonstrated that the last months and days of a person’s life can be dignified, worth living and even pain-free,” he said in The Guardian.

The importance of hospices

In his article, the British politician also referred to hospices where the terminally ill are cared for until the end of their lives.

“For two weeks in the summer of 2009, Sarah and I volunteered at our local hospice, an NHS-run building on the hospital grounds.”

“Once again, we saw firsthand how sensitive healthcare and compassionate nursing responded to individual needs and desires,” she said.

Likewise, she recalled, on a visit to the hospice she found a classmate who was grateful for “the help, support, attention and love she was receiving as she faced her final days.” This “convinced me that we can guarantee that there is something like a dignified death,” he said.

Criticism of the bill

Regarding the bill, presented by Kim Leadbeater, also a Labor member, the former prime minister referred to the insufficient protection there is against the pressures that may fall on “fragile and vulnerable people who may feel that their lives have become a burden for others.”

He indicated that an estimated “375,000 people over the age of 60 in England and Wales are victims of abuse each year, and as Dutch professor Theo Boer, an ethicist who changed his position after reviewing thousands of cases, has discovered, many are “They feel pressured to ‘take the step.'”

In that sense, Brown warned that an assisted dying law “would alter society’s attitude toward older, seriously ill and disabled people, even if subliminally.”

Therefore, he asked the British authorities if “would it not be better to concentrate all our energies on improving comprehensive palliative care to reach all those who need support at the end of life?”

The politician concluded his article by pointing out that “the medical advances that can transform care at the end of life and the horror of death into loneliness, as in the case of covid, have taught us a lot”, therefore, “this generation has the power to ensure that no one has to face death alone, unattended or subject to avoidable pain.”