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Diane Pretty loses right to die appeal

Britain's highest court today ruled against allowing the husband of Diane Pretty, a terminally ill woman, to assist her in taking her own life.
  
  


Britain's highest court today ruled against allowing the husband of Diane Pretty, a terminally ill woman, to assist her in taking her own life.

Ms Pretty's case has sparked a national debate about euthanasia, and today the law lords resolved some ambiguities about the law on assisted suicide. Her human rights were not infringed and assisted suicide is against the law, the law lords ruled.

The unanimous decision by five law lords denies Ms Pretty the right to appeal a decision by the director of public prosecutions, who failed to guarantee her husband, Brian, immunity from criminal prosecution if he assisted in her suicide.

Lord Bingham said the European Convention on Human Rights, enshrined in the UK Human Rights Act, did not guarantee assisted suicide. He said Ms Pretty could not establish that her rights had been infringed by the director of public prosecution's refusal to waive any legal action against her husband.

Ms Pretty, a 43-year-old mother of two, suffers from motor neurone disease and is now paralysed from the neck down. Her lawyers said that her disease is progressive and she has not responded to any treatment. She therefore faced death from respiratory failure and pneumonia when her breathing muscles became affected by the disease.

Her condition was diagnosed in 1999 and has deteriorated rapidly so that she now has no decipherable speech and has to be fed via a tube to her stomach.

Giving the views of the law lords, Lord Bingham rejected the argument that the right to life protected the right to self-determination over life and death.

Whatever the benefits that many people attach to voluntary euthanasia, suicide or assisted suicide, they did not derive protection from an EC right framed to protect the sanctity of life, he said.

Regarding the EC right prohibiting torture, Lord Bingham said it could not plausibly be suggested that the DPP was inflicting this on Ms Pretty, whose suffering derived from her cruel disease. Assisted suicide was illegal in all EC countries except the Netherlands, said Lord Bingham.

He said it was not hard to imagine that an elderly person, in the absence of any pressure, might opt for a premature end to life if available, not from a desire to die but from a desire to stop being a burden to others.

On the right of freedom of thought, Lord Bingham said that Ms Pretty might have a sincere belief in the virtue of assisted suicide and was free to express that view. But it could not mean there was a requirement that her husband should be absolved from the consequences of conduct which was against the law.

Ms Pretty was granted an urgent hearing at the House of Lords after the high court ruled in October that a family member could not help a loved one die.

She said before the ruling today: "I hope the Lords will grant me this last wish and allow me a say in how I die. I have tried every type of medical treatment offered, including palliative care, and fought this disease every step of the way.

"If I am allowed to decide when and how I die, I will feel that I have wrested some autonomy back and kept hold of my dignity," she said.

 

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