Quotes

“Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers.”

– Dr. Atul Gawande

“There are few presumptions in human relations more dangerous than the idea that one knows what another human being needs better than they do themselves.”

– Michael Ignatieff

“When suffering is so great, when patients know they are at the end of life, make repeated pleas to die, it seems a denial of loving compassion, which is the hallmark of Christianity, to refuse to allow them to fulfil their own clearly stated request – after a proper process of safeguards. That is what I would want.” 

– Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton

“I do not want artificial feeding or to be on an artificial breathing machine – I don't want people to do their damnedest to keep me alive.”  

– Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“It is discrimination against the disabled to deny them the right to kill themselves that able bodied people have."  

– Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist with motor neurone disease

“It is a paradox that while we have made huge progress in medicine, enabling some of us to live longer, for a number of terminally ill people the end can still bring loss of control and autonomy and pain that even palliative care fails to alleviate.”  

– The Observer newspaper

“People should be able to exercise choice over their own lives which should include how and when they die, when death is imminent. In recent decades, respect for autonomy has emerged as the cardinal principle in medical ethics and underpins developments in informed consent, patient confidentiality, and advance directives.” 

– British Medical Journal