Diane Pretty

A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Health announced on 24 April that in accordance with the wishes of the patient, the breathing apparatus had been switched off and she “passed away peacefully in her sleep”.

This was the first case of legalized euthanasia in Britain, but it remains to be seen whether legal precedent has been set. On the same day that Miss B died, 52-year-old Diane Pretty was denied the same right. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British courts were right to ban her from being helped to die.

Pretty is completely paralized as a reusult of an incurable muscular disease; she is fed through a catheter and can only speak with the help of a sophisticated computerized speech system. Her husband Brian Pretty went to court in Britain asking to be allowed to help his wife to die, but was refused. His lawyers took the case to the British law lords – the highest court in the country – again without success. They then decided to appeal against the British judgement in the European court. But in Strasbourg Diane Pretty’s case was found to be groundless.

Now if Brian Pretty still decides to carry out his wife’s wishes, he will be prosecuted under British law, which sets a 14-year prison sentence for assisting a suicide. If he decides against it, Diane will soon die in terrible pain, as the muscles responsible for breathing become paralyzed. They still have three months to appeal, and now, following the judgement of the British court in the case of Miss B, events may turn out more favourably.

Opponents of euthanasia argue that “society should protect the sick, and not kill them”. Its supporters believe that there should be a change to a law which place unfortunate people like Pretty in an situation from which there is no way out. “Diane cannot commit suicide for objective reasons, and that is why she needs assistance”, say her lawyers. The law discriminates against people with disabilities who are incapable, unlike healthy people, of deciding themselves whether to live or die.

This presents the question: what stopped the British courts from agreeing to Diane Pretty’s request, when they judged in favour of Miss B? Pretty is no less clear in her mind than Miss B, and certainly no less determined to die. So why is one allowed, and the other not? Perhaps because in the case of Miss B, a doctor helped her to die, while Pretty is asking for her husband to help her? But from a moral point of view, what is the difference? Brian Pretty, as an individual even has certain advantages of the doctors, who have taken the Hippocratic oath. Perhaps the British court is simply wavering from side to side, like the old neurasthenics, incapable of taking a decision? You see, it might turn out to be unpopular.

The whole country is feverish, just like the court authorities: there are supporters of euthanasia and many opponents. Evidence has shown that, regardless of the ban, British doctors have used lethal doses of drugs, usually diamorphine, to help 27 thousand patients to die. This suggests that, sooner or later, Britain will catch up with the Netherlands, which is so far the only country where euthanasia is legal.