Pack up your troubles, come on, get happy...

There really is nothing like a good poster child, whether for a cause, a movement or a whole generation. And now we have one! Falling nicely into the cause category, the lovely Debbie Purdy is the new poster-girl for assisted suicide. And she is literally made of awesome. Debbie has MS, and is well aware that her quality of life, physical, mental and emotional states may, in the future, deteriorate past the point where she could say “Well huh, my boss hates me, they’ve discontinued my favourite lipstick shade and I can’t believe they’ve cancelled Alias, but at least I have my health”. So Debbies been in court recently, not really asking for much at all. In fact all Debbie wants from the courts is that they clarify the laws pertaining to assisted suicide. Clarify, not change. Debbie, quite rightly, is worried that when she makes her trip over to Switzerland to stock up on cuckoo clocks, munch some really good chocolate, and kill herself, her husband will be arrested on his return to England for breaking the law by assisting her peaceful death. Now, committing suicide is not illegal in this country, but the law is pretty clear that a person cannot help another person kill themselves.

In this case, Debbie, wanting to make sure she acts inside the law and wanting to also protect her husband, is simply asking the Director of Public Prosecutions to clearly set out all the circumstances in which a person may face prosecution; which a court today ruled was not going to happen. Currently, after an act is committed the courts review the actions and decide if they will prosecute. Come on, that’s totally lame. All Debbie wants is to be able to stay within the law and protect her family – but the law is stopping her do those things. Crazy. Now, the law, passed in 1968, had its last big moment in the spotlight in 2006, when a UK bill which would have made "physician-assisted suicide" legal was thrown out by the House of Lords. The debate over the issue was heightened (at the time) by the case of Diane Pretty, a motor neurone disease patient who fought a legal campaign to make her husband safe from prosecution should he help her to die. Not only did she lose her case, but the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 29 April that the refusal of the British courts to allow Diane Pretty's husband to help her to die did not contravene her human rights.

The law is in place for a reason, that’s for sure. Its there to help vulnerable people who risk becoming coerced into an assisted suicide. That seems fair enough. And yes, I guess the majority of laws are in place to protect vulnerable people, but sometimes the lines can become a little blurry (the classic Who Was at Fault? Humbert, Dolores, or Dolores crazy mother..?). Also Anti-euthanasia campaigners are worried that a change in the law might not only be abused but that it might lead to resources being diverted away from palliative care (the bit of medicine focused on alleviating the suffering of terminally-ill patients). But how about poor Debbie? She’s looking to end up in a really awkward position, where her choice is to either risk getting her husband locked up when he returns from taking her abroad to die, or taking the trip under her own steam, which means deciding when she has become ill enough to want to die, but not so ill as she requires assistance with, you know, carrying her bags or hailing a taxi.

Crazy. Anyway, although Debbie didn’t succeed in court today, she has been granted an appeal hearing, which at least shows an acceptance of the overwhelming public interest factor to the case.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard about Debbie today, it’s not your fault. All the worlds’ media has been taken up by Public Outrage, due to Russell Brand and Jonty Ross being Rude and Offensive. Now, lets be clear here 1) The BBC are not going to sack Russ and J-Ro, they make the BBC far too much money. 2) It wouldn’t make any difference if they did. Those two grinning loons would just carry on their infiltrations of our conscious on some other broadcasting frequency, with the added bonus of being so super-edgy that they were sacked from the BBC. 3) I honestly don’t care either way; I just didn’t want anybody to feel bad that they didn’t know about Debbie. Although it’s always fun to speculate how the BBC will tackle a public apology, a’la Richard Bacon.