By Professor John Wyatt (pictured right).
The term 'euthanasia' - literally "good death" - was adopted in the 1870s to refer to the intentional medical homicide of suffering patients through chloroform or other anaesthetics.
Since then, a long list of misleading labels have been applied by campaigners, from 'Easeful Death' to 'Medical Aid in Dying', all of which serve to obfuscate the unsettling reality of the issue - that administrating a lethal cocktail of drugs is fraught with long-lasting implications and the potential of trauma for all involved.
Instead, reassuring words like 'safety', 'choice' and 'protection' abound in MP Kim Leadbetter’s Private Member’s Bill, published on 11th November 2024, which is entitled 'Choice at the End of Life’, undoubtedly picking up on the phraseology of Dignity in Dying, the leading campaign organisation, who use the innocuous description “dying people deserve the choice to control the timing and manner of their death”, airbrushing out the messiness and emotional complexity involved in actually carrying out such an act, let alone the real possibility of vulnerable people facing coercion to die, should the Bill became law in the UK.
