Assisted dying bill is safer than any other in the world | Letters
Dr Lucy Thomas raises some interesting points in her defence of the House of Lords’ behaviour on assisted dying (Letters, 26 November).But it is a stretch to suggest that the 1,000 amendments that peers have tabled to the bill represent effective independent scrutiny.What possible justification can there be for requiring every dying person – including a 90-year-old in their final weeks with advanced metastasised cancer – to provide a negative pregnancy test before their request is approved (amendment 458)? I am sure there are many peers who want to scrutinise the bill in a sensible way, but they are being thwarted by a handful who seem intent on stopping law change at any cost.The bill as currently drafted – which MPs have amended and approved – is safer than any other in the world, including in its protections for doctors.Clause 31 ensures that if Dr Thomas doesn’t wish to support her patients with this option, she would be under absolutely no obligation to do so.
There are many doctors, like me, who take a different view and feel that it is deeply unethical to rob dying people of their agency at a time when it matters most to them.Healthcare professionals who want to be involved will have an important part to play in the process.I see a sad parallel between some in the medical profession trying to dictate what choices people should and should not be able to make at the end of their lives and a vocal minority in the House of Lords who think they know better than Westminster’s democratically elected chamber.Dying people are depending on parliament to find a way through this logjam.Dr Jacky DavisChair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying; consultant radiologist Simon Jenkins’s article on the assisted dying debate (Unelected Lords are blocking assisted dying: that’s a democratic outrage) and the correspondence that has followed illustrate the confusion that a handful of hardline opponents in the House of Lords are taking advantage of in order to wreck Kim Leadbeater’s bill.
However, as Dr Lucy Thomas points out, what is needed is legislation to permit terminal assistance to patients in indefinite and unbearable pain or distress.The bill now being dismembered by a group of peers makes the mistake, like its predecessors, of trying to meet the opposition halfway by limiting assistance in dying to those believed to have six months or less to live.The consequence, as Dr Thomas says, is without logic and is giving doctrinal opponents a field day.If passed, it may be better than nothing, but it will do nothing for patients such as Tony Nicklinson, left by a stroke with nothing but the ability to ask to die, and denied that elementary mercy by the supreme court, which in 2014 decided it was a matter for parliament.What is needed now is a responsible act of government.
In exchange for Leadbeater’s well-intentioned bill, with its substantial Commons majority, ministers should promote a new assisted dying bill that drops the arbitrary life expectancy test and allows doctors to help patients who need and want it to bring a life of indefinite suffering to a close,Stephen SedleyFormer appeal court judge Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section,
Homes in Tunbridge Wells without water for days after wrong chemicals added
Thousands of homes have been without water for four days in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, after South East Water accidentally added the wrong chemicals to the tap water supply.Schools across the area have been shut for two days, and residents have been filling buckets with rainwater to flush toilets. Cats, dogs and guinea pigs have been given bottled mineral water to drink as the people of Tunbridge Wells wait for their water to be switched back on. Currently, 18,000 homes are without water.The water company accidentally used a bad batch of coagulant chemicals at its Pembury treatment site, meaning it had to be closed down in order to clean out the pipes
OECD warns Reeves higher taxes and spending restraint will limit consumer expenditure
Rachel Reeves has been warned by a leading thinktank that tight government spending and higher taxes will restrict consumer expenditure, despite predicting the UK economy will grow at a faster pace than France, Germany and Italy next year.Analysts at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the government’s ongoing “fiscal consolidation” – meaning higher taxes and reduced government spending – will act as a “headwind” to the UK economy, with “past tax and spending adjustments weighing on household disposable income and slowing consumption”.The Paris-based organisation predicted that the UK would expand by 1.2% next year, while the big three eurozone economies would each fail to reach 1%.Offering a boost to Reeves after she faced calls to resign after the budget, the UK’s growth rate was upgraded from a previous forecast of 1% next year
‘It’s going much too fast’: the inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI
On the 8.49am train through Silicon Valley, the tables are packed with young people glued to laptops, earbuds in, rattling out code.As the northern California hills scroll past, instructions flash up on screens from bosses: fix this bug; add new script. There is no time to enjoy the view. These commuters are foot soldiers in the global race towards artificial general intelligence – when AI systems become as or more capable than highly qualified humans
AI’s safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds
Poetry can be linguistically and structurally unpredictable – and that’s part of its joy. But one man’s joy, it turns out, can be a nightmare for AI models.Those are the recent findings of researchers out of Italy’s Icaro Lab, an initiative from a small ethical AI company called DexAI. In an experiment designed to test the efficacy of guardrails put on artificial intelligence models, the researchers wrote 20 poems in Italian and English that all ended with an explicit request to produce harmful content such as hate speech or self-harm.They found that the poetry’s lack of predictability was enough to get the AI models to respond to harmful requests they had been trained to avoid – a process know as “jailbreaking”
‘We make a great living’: Emma Raducanu on why she won’t moan about the tennis calendar
British No 1 on home comforts of Bromley, joys of commuting and being ‘creeped out’ by paparazziEmma Raducanu has garnered many endorsement deals in her nascent career, but there is perhaps one elusive sponsorship that would be most pleasing to the British No 1 women’s tennis player: ambassador of the London Borough of Bromley.During a roundtable discussion with tennis journalists at the end of a gruelling yet satisfying season, Raducanu is merely attempting to describe a quiet off-season spent in her family home when she finds herself delivering a sales pitch about the benefits of living in Bromley. “I’m just so settled,” she says. “I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but I think just spending really good quality time with my parents has been so nice. I have loved just being in Bromley
‘Your column was very unfair’: what happened when I met World Athletics | Sean Ingle
It really is quite the scene. Midnight in Tokyo, Usain Bolt is DJing and the launch party for the World Athletics Ultimate Championships is in full swing. And then the World Athletics chief executive, Jon Ridgeon, walks up to me and says: “I read your recent Guardian column, and I thought it was very unfair.”Imagine Gary Lineker going in two-footed, having never picked up a yellow card in his career. This is the track and field equivalent
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Why it’s silly to focus on Labour’s manifesto pledges | Letter
Does Labour have a death wish or does it secretly enjoy the agony of self-sabotage?