- LETTER FROM JANINE TRUTER 14/07/06 -

Dying with Dignity is a Common Goal

Palliative care is essential, and if Juliette Harris (Making Life a burden), Opinion 13/7) can guarantee me a painless dying in which my dignity remains in tact, I am behind her 100 per cent.

But if I am one of the 10% of people for whom modern pain relief doesn't work, or if I don't want to be dying in a bed full of my own excrement because my bowels have packed it six weeks before I die, or I choose while competent, not to be a drooling vegetable for years who the hell is she to order me to suffer for her ideals?

The Dying with Dignity movement is just that - a movement that argues than an individual should be free to die with dignity, and should not be forced to suffer horribly at the end of their lives to assuage the moral qualms of strangers. Palliative care should include the option of a peaceful death, and it should be the choice of the individual doing the dying. To die with dignity is a goal common to palliative care and the Dying with Dignity reform groups

Janine Truter, The Basin