Case of Mercy Killing Hits British Media.

From my friend Graciela: a new British documentary on assisted suicide contains the admission by veteran BBC reporter Ray Gosling that many years ago, when his lover who was dying from Aids, he honored their pact by holding a pillow over the dying man's face to prevent more suffering.

Sarah Garrod reports at InTheNews:

A BBC broadcaster is being investigated by police after he confessed live on air he had smothered his lover who was dying of Aids.

Ray Gosling, 70, said he had committed the killing as a mercy act, to prevent his lover from suffering "terrible pain".

Mr Gosling made the confession on the BBC East Midlands programme Inside Out broadcast last night. It is understood the show was recorded last November, but the BBC had not notified the police.

Nottinghamshire police said: "We were not aware of Mr Gosling's comments until the BBC Inside Out programme was shown.

"We are now liaising with the BBC and will investigate the matter."

Mr Gosling said on the show: "I killed someone once. He'd been my lover and he got Aids.

"I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. No regrets."

He added that he had killed the man after doctors told him in hospital that nothing more could be done for him: "I said to the doctor: 'Leave me… just for a bit,' and he went away.

"I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said: 'He's gone.' Nothing more was ever said.

"When you love someone, it is difficult to see them suffer. My feelings on euthanasia are like jelly - they wobble about.

"This is the time to share a secret I have kept for quite a long time."

Care Not Killing, a UK-based alliance which promotes "more and better palliative care" and aims to ensure "that existing laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not weakened or repealed during the lifetime of the current Parliament", said following the broadcast of the show: "It is impossible for any outsider to establish the facts in this case objectively as all we have currently is Mr Gosling's confession.

"The police will need to investigate the case thoroughly in order to establish the facts and then it will be up to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to decide whether to bring a prosecution. If the DPP proceeds it will then be a matter for the courts. A key difficulty faced by all those involved will be that the key witness, the deceased, will be unable to give any account about what actually happened.

Hedging the Word Murder for the Sake of Profession's Power and Pride.

MacDoctor writes at his site about the two verdicts recently reached in Britain on mercy killing cases, questioning both decisions. Then he proceeds to confuse the hell out of his readers on absolutes like suffering, murder and end of life choice. Like most conservative doctors who claim to know just what they're talking about when it comes to "euthanasia" but refuse to abandon the unreasonable absolutes they have been taught - he comes out in support of pain:

The first verdict troubles me greatly. I have enormous sympathy for this lady and for her daughter. Multiple Sclerosis is a truly awful disease that causes progressive debilitation, weakness and chronic pain in the patient. But, as I have argued in a number of recent posts on Euthanasia, the person requesting assisted suicide is highly likely to be depressed and therefore in need of treatment, not death.

Ok, so you're body is debilitated by MS and death is impending without a doubt. Maybe you're given less than six months to live (as Death with Dignity requires in the US). A little depressed, maybe? You've accepted that death is coming, caused by the incurable disease, and that surely tremendous pain and suffering will precede it. What does MacDoctor recommend? Cheer up! Because unless you're living with (unrealistic) hope that you will happily go on, you must be depressed - and that's bad. (No wonder doctor's fail to give their patient's direct, scientific, accurate diagnoses.)

The idea of assisted suicide should then be anathema to any doctor who follows hippocratic ethics. It is also highly unlikely that a parent could have the skill set to exclude a depressive illness and retain sufficient composure to make a reasoned clinical judgement on the issue. I most certainly could not do it. I therefore think the idea of “assisted suicide” is made plausible in the legal system, and in the eyes of the public, only because they do not understand the complexities of the situation.

Strange, I feel the opposite. When you know more about the effects of a disease, the particular disabilities visited on a patient, the general diagnosis, the amount of love and time and years the family have invested in that patient's care, when you let go of the myth of hippocratic ethics (MacDoctor fails to say what he means here, though I suspect the "first do no harm" stuff that is loosely taken from the original oath, written in 4 BC and seldom used in medical schools, an ethics I don't mean to belittle but would seriously like to have someone clearly - historically, technically - define), and when aid in dying is offered via the strict supervision of two doctors - the issue is no longer for the mother or parent or loved one to make. It is up to the patient. Is it not this necessary leadership to the Styx, this advisement and direction, this authority and wisdom that families look to doctors for?! Where is the authority in the face of suffering? Why have doctors again and again throughout the ages chosen to abandon patients at the end of life, in their suffering?

We maintain a myth of “mercy” killing, purely because we do not see the alternatives that may, in fact, make life bearable and even sweet for a patient again. Granted, these alternatives may not actually exist. But they need to be sought for in a reasoned and considered manner, not in the despair of a particularly bad day.

Ok, let's substitute the myth of mercy killing for the myth of relief - or the futile search for one? Or better yet, for the myth of redemptive suffering! Why? Because "giving up hope" - a euphemism for facing death - is bad, and it signals depression? As MacDoctor says, it shows lack of respect for life?! In neither of the cases noted here was the mother motivated by the vagaries of a particularly bad day. They spent years, decades even, caring with the greatest of patience for their dear children - always working and caring with hope. The women acted because they ultimately saw no future for their child - nor perhaps for themselves - and in one case because the child begged repeatedly for release. As Jeff Sharlet has said about the death of his mother:

Shortly before ! she died, she invited people of different faiths -- Buddhism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism -- to pray with her at the house. These people spoke of salvation -- of preparing for the next world, for life after death. But his mother, Sharlet said, wanted to pray for deliverance.

"She would say, 'I want to be delivered from my death.' ... That always stayed with me. That whole idea of deliverance versus salvation -- it's the most interesting dilemma you could have."

And the women MacDoctor condemns, albeit with the removed compassion afforded one who is not implicated, acted alone because they had no option of going to a doctor. They were isolated and forced to act out of compassion for their suffering children because neither the state nor the medical profession nor the church would hear their needs. Tell me, what does a dying patient have? What does a care taker have at the end? Abandonment, often. And the high-mindedness of a profession that fails to look realistically at the ramifications of that abandonment and desire for release.

I am acutely conscious that sometimes my colleagues and I are singularly useless in assisting suffering patients to seek other solutions besides death. This does not make murder right. Nor does it mean that “mercy killing” or ”assisted suicide” is somehow one step down from murder. By all means let us show mercy to those who resort to murder for reasons that are both understandable and non-malignant. But let us not dress it up as anything less than the “killing of another person , not for the purpose of self defense” – murder in anyone’s book. To do anything else is to devalue life.

So the alternative to "mercy killing" is to allow sanctioned suffering as the default treatment? Doctors can't do anything about end of life suffering often. But by all means, let's not change the laws to address more humane ways of treating dying patients. That would "devalue life"? What the hell does this sort of insensitivity mean coming from a doctor - indeed the medical profession? Rather maybe than ask doctors to take a stand against senseless suffering, the profession would prefer to enjoy their quiet, noble, paternalistic position by inflicting futile care and prolonged death on the suffering? The church and their pride have convinced them that they are the keepers of pain. Rather than break down ideas of murder and mercy killing for those in pain, let's continue to sanction it for an abstract idea like "sanctity" and "life."

Maybe all those cries from "pro-life" groups that doctors who participate in humanely ending life really have hurt the profession's noble pride. Who wants to be ostracized for standing up for a particular, controversial issue? Particularly when you can snow the public to believe that the "double effect" is completely separate from aid in dying. Particularly when you can exempt yourself and your profession from the truth of dying - in lieu of noble ideas that have no place near the sick bed. So long as it's not your pain or suffering and you can claim loose ideas like compassion, why not let a desperate, cornered, abandoned, grieving mother face government and society sanctions. Why speak up when you're not the one spending the next 9 months in jail - and a lifetime thereafter wondering why society has abandoned you.

British Mom Found Not Guilty of Assisting Daughter's Suicide.

Today Bridget Kathleen Gilderdale of Britain was declared not guilty in the suicide of her ill daughter.

If you want to hear a story that makes you question all the religiously-inflected laws in this country, all the ideas of the "culture of death," all the supposed humanity behind the pro-life activism we saw this week during the March for Life on DC - with it's images of surgeries and fetus-shaped potatoes and euphemisms for vulnerability, murder, martyrdom, compassion and liberty, with it's work to enforce laws that decide when your life begins and ends and when you have children, that invades your examination room privacy, that defines women by their fertility and refuses to trust their judgement, that imposes religious doctrine via law and calls it "traditional values," that works to define Terri Schiavo as severely disabled, her husband "estranged," her life and yours in their hands: read this:

After the jury had delivered its verdict, Mr Justice Bean said: "I do not normally comment on the verdicts of juries but in this case their decision, if I may say so, shows common sense, decency and humanity which makes jury trials so important in a case of this kind.

"There is no dispute that you were a caring and loving mother and that you considered that you were acting in the best interests of your daughter."

Earlier prosecutor Sally Howes was asked by Mr Justice Bean "why it was considered to be in the public interest" to pursue Gilderdale on the attempted murder charge when she had pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting suicide.

ANALYSIS Ben Ando, BBC crime reporter A slight figure with auburn, medium-length hair, spectacles and in plain, dark clothing, there was nothing remarkable about middle-aged divorcee Bridget Kathleen Gilderdale until she took her place in the dock in Lewes Crown Court. Gilderdale, who is known as Kay, had listened intently to the legal argument and evidence during the 10 days of her trial though, as is her right, she had declined to enter the witness box herself and give evidence in her own defence. After hearing both prosecution and defence agree that she was a devoted, loving mother who had shown unstinting care for her daughter over 17 years, the jury was quick to return a verdict of not guilty of attempted murder. Another count, of aiding and abetting suicide, had been admitted by Gilderdale and for this she received a 12-month conditional discharge, among the most lenient sentences the judge could impose.

Ms Howes said the prosecution decided at "the highest level" to try Gilderdale after she told her GP and police she had given her daughter an air embolism with the intent to end her life.

Because a post-mortem examination found that Miss Gilderdale had died of a morphine overdose, her mother was not charged with murder but with attempted murder.

Following the trial Gilderdale's son, Steve, read out a statement on the steps of the court flanked by his mother and father, which praised the verdict.

He said: "We believe this not guilty verdict properly reflects the selfless actions my mother took on finding that Lynn had decided to take her own life, to make her daughter's final moments as peaceful and painless as possible.

"These actions exhibit the same qualities of dedication, love and care that mum demonstrated throughout the 17 years of Lynn's illness.

"I'm very proud of her and I hope she will be afforded the peace that she deserves to rebuild her life and finally grieve for the death of her daughter."

Jurors were told that after Miss Gilderdale made a failed suicide bid her mother crushed up pills with a pestle and mortar and fed them to her through her nasal tube, handed her morphine and injected three syringes of air into her vein.

Lynn Gilderdale developed ME at the age of 14

The court was told the 55-year-old tried to stop her daughter ending her life but backed down after she told her: "I want the pain to go."

More from the Telegraph. And from the Guardian.

Frenzy of Compassion: Medea and Britain's Mom Mercy Killers.

From bioedge.org, a summary of the two mercy killing cases in Britain.

Two mothers who have taken the lives of their severely disabled children are in this article oddly summarized as "separated from their husbands, with whom they were still on good terms, but they made the decision alone after working themselves into a frenzy of compassion."

I wonder if the implication of the last phrase is something like that common female derangement, hysteria? Why else would someone choose death if not crazy? Why else would one consider the "murder" of their loved one if not in a frenzy? I doubt "frenzy of compassion" and the marital status of the women would be so blatantly framed as "causes" of the deaths had the actors been men.

The article seems to reach to that other ancient "mercy killing" mother archetype, Medea, who killed her two beloved children to get back at Jason, her philandering husband, to save them from a life of shame and debasement. Like Medea they are described as in a frenzy, like Medea they look to that modern oracle, the internet, for answers, and like Media they are bound for banishment from society.

Here's the rest of the article, by Michael Cook:

Assisted suicide is never long out of the headlines in England, it seems. This week they featured two devoted mothers who killed their disabled children. In the first case, 57-year-old Frances Inglis was sentenced to life imprisonment for giving her brain-damaged 22-year-old son Thomas a lethal dose of heroin in November 2008. She will have to serve a minimum sentence of 9 years.

In 2007 Thomas was injured in a brawl and taken unwillingly to a hospital by ambulance. He jumped out while it was moving and ended up with severe brain damage. She believed that since then he had been living a life of "horror, pain and tragedy'' and she was determined to bring it to an end. In September 2007 she injected her son with heroin, but he was resuscitated. She denied her involvement after she was arrested. While on bail for attempted murder, she obtained 10 packets of heroin for £200, and injected him again.

Mrs Inglish told the court that she had no choice: "The definition of murder is to take someone's life with malice in your heart. I did it with love in my heart for Tom, so I don't see it as murder. I knew what I was doing was against the law." However, prosecuting lawyer Miranda Moore said in her closing statement: "It is a tragic case but it is not a defence to murder to end someone's life to put them out of their misery.''

In a similar case which is still being tried, 55-year-old Kay Gilderdale gave her 31-year-old daughter sleeping pills, anti-depresssants and morphine to help her to commit suicide. Her daughter Lynn had been mute and bed-ridden since she was 14 after contracting myalgic encephalomyelitis.

The two stories have common features. Both women were separated from their husbands, with whom they were still on good terms, but they made the decision alone after working themselves into a frenzy of compassion. And both relied upon the internet for finding information about their children's condition and how to kill them. Mrs Gilderdale was reading about euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke as her daughter was dying. -- London Telegraph, Jan 20; BBC, Jan 20