Two intellectual heavyweights will go head-to-head over the rights and wrongs of assisted dying tomorrow night – in the hallowed surroundings of Durham Cathedral. Here, the Reverend Professor Paul Badham and Dr Andrew Fergusson make their case.

The Northern Echo: Reverend Professor Paul Badham

The Reverend Professor Paul Badham is an emeritus professor of theology and religious studies at Wales University, author of Is There a Christian Case for Assisted Dying? and speaks for the Dignity in Dying campaign.

WHEN I fall ill, I hope for a cure.

When cure becomes impossible, I will want palliative care to give symptomatic relief so I can live with my illness.

Care Not Killing claims that 95 per cent of pain in terminal illness can be controlled.

That still means one person in 20 will suffer significantly. If I were one of those, I would seek help to hasten my end.

Jesus’ key teaching is that we should love our neighbour as ourselves and treat others as we wish to be treated.

Surveys show that more than 80 per cent of us want the option of an assisted death. Christian compassion should allow this.

Some say this is playing God and challenging God’s prerogative to choose the hour of our deaths.

If we seriously believed that, why use medicine to keep death at bay or resuscitate people whose hearts stop?

The main argument against changing the law is fear of weakening commitment to health provision.

Is such fear justified?

One clue lies in the websites of the World Health Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development where we can see comparative statistics.

Switzerland comes out best. Despite having the most liberal law on assisted dying, it has four-anda- half times as many hospital beds per person as the UK. The Swiss have longer hospital stays and more doctors. They spend much more on health and on average live two-and-a-half years longer than UK citizens.

In Oregon, the Hospice Association led the opposition to their Death with Dignity Act.

When this Act was passed, they asked the US Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional.

Eight years on, the court turned down their appeal.

At that point, the Hospice Association issued a new position statement.

They said they were glad they had lost because, “Absolutely none of our dire predictions has been realised.” Instead, the number of the terminally ill in hospices had risen from 22 per cent to 51 per cent.

Observing this, the neighbouring states of Washington and Montana have followed suit.

According to the Royal Dutch Medical Association, opponents of euthanasia have given a very inaccurate picture of the situation in the Netherlands.

Rather, experience of voluntary euthanasia has changed the Dutch people’s perspective.

In 1966, 49 per cent were opposed to euthanasia. By 1996 only ten per cent opposed it. By 2007, surveys found that Dutch doctors were the most trusted in Europe with 97 per cent approval.

Belgium and Luxembourg have followed the Netherlands’ example.

The Northern Echo: Dr Andrew Fergusson

Dr Andrew Fergusson has worked in general practice, hospital medicine, has written extensively on assisted dying and speaks for the Care Not Killing campaign, of which he is chairman.

THE Voluntary Euthanasia Society renames itself Dignity in Dying.

The words “assisted dying” come to replace “euthanasia” and “assisted suicide”.

But language matters. “Assisted dying” means acts of medical killing.

These break the sixth commandment – You shall not murder, which prohibits the intentional killing of the legally innocent. I am convinced no civilised society should remove this ancient boundary.

But as a doctor I have sometimes had to ask, Why does God say that? I remember Jim, effectively tetraplegic from unremitting multiple sclerosis, who asked me monthly for about two years to kill him.

I’ll never forget the first occasion.

He said, “Doc, go and get something and put me out of this.

If I was an animal you would have to.”

For a moment my heart said, Yes, that’s the right thing to do; and then my head said, “No, Jim, I can’t do that. It’s against the law.” – and I was so grateful I could say that – “and as a Christian it gives me a special problem. But I’m glad you’ve said it, because I hadn’t realised how bad things had got and I promise from now on we will all work twice as hard for you.” And we did.

The compassion case for euthanasia (the human-kindness?) stands or falls on: do we have to kill the patient to kill the symptoms?

Hospices and palliative care have been so successful at controlling positive symptoms like pain that the whole debate has moved on to those negative symptoms, the losses of perceived dignity, which medicine alone cannot cure.

The argument now is autonomy – whose life is it anyway?

If we change the law thus for patient autonomy, health professional autonomy is impacted. UK doctors are ever more resolutely opposed – and the closer they are to dying patients, the more opposed doctors are.

Most patients asking to be killed have another question behind the question. Deal with their real need and they stop asking. There are some fully deliberated requests, but to change the law to allow that small vocal minority their alleged right, a much greater vulnerable majority is put at risk. Civilised societies protect the vulnerable.

And finally, 20 years of Dutch statistics show that legalising voluntary euthanasia means that euthanasia which is not voluntary follows. That is doctor paternalism of the very worst kind.

Killing patients from whatever misplaced motives of kindness is indeed playing God. Let us instead care with real human kindness.

• The Durham Cathedral dialogue Assisted Dying – Human Kindness or Playing God? takes place at Durham Cathedral tomorrow, at 7.30pm. Admission is free and it is open to all. There will be a retiring collection.