The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCB) and its “citizen’s jury” has been called “deeply flawed” by Care Not Killing (CNK), a gaggle which campaigns against euthanasia and in favour of greater palliative care.
The council and its “jury” don’t have any legal powers but have given their support to the concept that families be allowed to take elderly or disabled relatives abroad to die, without the protection of any safeguards.
The idea behind the jury, which has 28 members, is to permit members of the general public to contemplate the problem of euthanasia in additional detail than a regular opinion poll or survey would allow.
However, even from its inception, CNK noted that there are serious impartiality concerns surrounding the jury and the NCB which established it.
CNK pointed to the incontrovertible fact that the director of the NCB was previously the director of pro-euthanasia group, Compassion in Dying. Another NCB council member was also the chair of Compassion in Dying, while the jury project itself was funded by a pro-euthanasia organisation.
Gordon MacDonald, CEO of CNK also took issue with the choice criteria for the jury, which he said “included an in-built two thirds (65 per cent) majority of people that were either in favour or strongly in favour of fixing the law on assisted suicide and euthanasia before taking any evidence”.
“Most people would think that this makes a mockery of the term jury,” he said.
Macdonald said that given the composition of the jury and the background of the NCB leadership, it is not any surprise that it got here to the conclusions it did.
“Had the Nuffield Council on Bioethics chosen a jury which was rigorously impartial with no strong views about assisted dying the conclusions reached would almost definitely have been different,” he said.
Macdonald then pointed to polling carried out on behalf of CNK that suggested that significant sections of the general public have concerns about changing the law on euthanasia. One of the foremost areas of concern is that vulnerable people can be pressured into ending their life prematurely by relatives and even by the NHS itself, given the grim reality that death is cheaper than long-term palliative care.
Parliament is currently considering a latest law that will make it easier for people to decide on to finish their life with medical supervision.
CNK has called for the “dangerous and controversial” bill to be scrapped, and for greater effort to be placed on rebuilding Britain’s “broken” palliative and social care systems.
