Twelve reasons why assisted suicide should not be legalised;
1.)The number of elderly beds in hospitals has been reduced from 27 000 - 21 000 over a period of five years, a reduction of 25%.
2.) Mid Staffordshire Hospital
3.) From 2004 - 2008, the number of specialist nursing homes for dementia sufferers has been reduced by 389, a drop of 9%.
4.)£289 per head per sufferer is spent on cancer research. £11 per head per sufferer is spent on dementia.
5.) NICE tried to remove all dementia medicines from presciption. After protests, it reinstated them, but only to be prescribed in the later stages of dementia when medicines like Aricept would be useless. Doctors now have to lie about what stage a dementia sufferer is at, so that they qualify for a presciption.
6.) Martin Ryan, a Downe's sufferer, died after being left for 26 days without food or water in hospital. Mencap reported on this and several other cases of neglect of people with learning difficulties in hospitals.
7.) Martin Amis is using the issue to promote his latest book launch.
8.) The worst health secretary in living memory and failed Labour coup leader is supporting it.
9.) Dr Jane Barton injected her elderly patients with doses of diamorphine and killed them. The GMC let her keep her registration.
10.) Margaret Haywood blew the whistle on neglect in an elderly care ward and got struck off the nursing register.
11.) The pro-euthanasia bioethicist Dr. Helga Kuhse said:
"If we can get people to accept the removal of all treatment and care—especially removal of food and fluids—they will see what a painful way this is to die and then, in the patient's best interests, they will accept the lethal injection."
12.) Hippocrates said:
"First do no harm."
