\n<\/p>\n
Legalised assisted dying should \u201cgradually\u201d be extended to dementia sufferers, the author Ian McEwan has said.<\/p>\n
McEwan was \u201cshocked by the snow-drilling attempts\u201d by those opposed to the UK\u2019s assisted dying bill, he told a public book event in London, citing its more than 1,000 amendments. MPs and peers backing the bill now believe it is \u201cnear impossible\u201d for it to pass the House of Lords before the end of the session in May due to alleged filibustering.<\/p>\n
If passed, the bill would legalise assisted dying in England and Wales for adults with less than six months to live. \u201cWe\u2019re not asking much,\u201d said McEwan, who is a patron of Dignity in Dying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like it when some bishop says on the radio: \u2018It\u2019s the thin end of the wedge,\u2019 and I think yes<\/em>, it is the thin end of the wedge\u201d, because certain groups are \u201cmissing from it\u201d, such as those with dementia. \u201cIt has to be physical pain\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess is that if we pushed it through with all the protections around it \u2013 of doctors and dispassionate people making judgments \u2013 we\u2019ll look back on this and think, \u2018Why did we ever let people die in agony?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Asked explicitly if he would add an amendment to extend assisted dying to dementia sufferers, McEwan said: \u201cGradually, yeah, I would. But I think it does require a lot more thought and the idea of living wills.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother used to say to me: \u2018If I ever become really terrible, I\u2019d like you to finish me off.\u2019 But of course, that\u2019s to commit murder as things stand. Imagine standing up in court and saying: \u2018Well, she did say when we were on the beach 20 years ago \u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n McEwan spoke about dementia\u2019s impact on his family \u2013 his mother Rose had dementia, as well as his brother-in-law and another close family member. \u201cBy the time my mother was well advanced and could not recognise anyone, she was dead. She was alive and dead all at once. It was a terrible thing. And the burden on those closest is also part of the radioactive damage of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n McEwan was speaking at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in central London, as part of its Conversation series, discussing his latest book, What We Can Know, in which dementia is a major theme. He has also written about dementia in previous novels, Lessons and Saturday.<\/p>\n The Atonement author also discussed the new novel he is working on, during a conversation about the ban on social media platforms for under-16s in Australia, and the measure\u2019s potential adoption in the UK. The author said that he is beginning \u201cto wish that the internet didn\u2019t exist. I think back enviously to the 70s, where one of the great luxuries of civilisation \u2013 which is solitude \u2013 was bounteously available, and has been worn away, and now so much dark stuff is coming out of it. I\u2019m trying to write a novel about this. The disappearance of childhood, or the sense of childhood being under escort.\u201d He said that he was in favour of social media bans.<\/p>\n A major theme of What We Can Know is climate change: the novel is partly set in 2119, at which point Britain has become an archipelago, having been submerged by rising seas. McEwan said that while he has \u201cnever known the world in a worse state\u201d, he maintains a \u201clittle streak of optimism that we\u2019re going to scrape through\u201d.<\/p>\n What We Can Know has an \u201cemotional background\u201d made up partially of despair, and partially of hope, said the author. If you have children and grandchildren, \u201cyou want the human project to survive\u201d. Yet, there\u2019s a \u201ccountervailing current\u201d common to all old people, he said \u2013 in order to make sense of their lives, people think: \u201cwith the end of me, it\u2019ll be the end of everything \u2013 \u2018apr\u00e8s moi, le d\u00e9luge<\/em>.\u2019 <\/em>Elderly pessimism is a very powerful constraint on clear thinking\u201d. He sees What We Can Know as an expression of those \u201ccontrary forces\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Legalised assisted dying should \u201cgradually\u201d be extended to dementia sufferers, the author Ian McEwan has said. McEwan was \u201cshocked by the snow-drilling attempts\u201d by those opposed to the UK\u2019s assisted dying bill, he told a public book event in London, citing its more than 1,000 amendments. MPs and peers backing the bill now believe it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[140,1001,680,6626,141,2265,19532,22583,702,22584],"class_list":{"0":"post-43047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-assisted","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-calls","11":"tag-dementia","12":"tag-dying","13":"tag-extend","14":"tag-ian","15":"tag-mcewan","16":"tag-rights","17":"tag-sufferers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}