Despite the recent death and suspected suicide of Tony Nicklinson, I am concerned and surprised to hear his widow is still pursuing an appeal to give a legal right for someone to be killed by their doctors. This immediately alerts me to the fact this will not the actions of a desperate me but a calculated ideology which will seriously affect the lives of many disabled people.

I now see the issue of euthanasia as far more grey than it was. The issue has now got to be split into the right to die and the right to be killed. While I would personally at this stage of my life not desire death, I do believe we have a right to die in the sense that we have an ability to commit suicide without assistance and we have to right to die from natural causes. 

The later goes against the idealogical to the medical world but I think we have reached a point in our social evolution where we must question how long we work to live in terms of coping with terminal illnesses. When someone only has a few days left and in severe pain, the right thing is more complex and we need to debate this further. But personal choice must be the key factor here, it is about the right not to be saved.

Where Tony was going was the idea that someone who was not dying from a terminal illness but felt they need help to commit suicide could on their terms ask their GP to ‘prescribe’ and nowadays commission it. This is murder in the purest sense and leaves room for so much misinterpretation and corruption, it is a very dangerous path and I can see doctors providing ‘compassion’ to parents for disabled children who are struggling because of environment issues. Tanni Grey may suggest parents can put their children in residential care because of debt issues but the late Tony Nickinson could be offering a cheaper solution.

The right to live comes first and no one has the right to take another persons life nor forced by law to have blood on their hands.

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