People suffering from anorexia could be endangered by assisted suicide laws, a health charity has warned ahead of today’s first vote on MSP Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill.
Health experts from the charity Eat Breathe Thrive, which helps people with eating disorders, have warned that the eligibility criteria in the bill are so broad that anorexia could deemed a “terminal” condition.
McArthur’s bill defines terminal illness as “an advanced and progressive disease, illness or condition from which a person is unable to recover”.
Eat Breathe Thrive says it knows of at least 60 cases worldwide of people with eating disorders who have been killed by such assisted suicide laws with a broad definition of “terminal”, though the figure is likely far higher.
Chelsea Roff, who founded the charity, said: “It’s even looser than some of the definitions of illness in the US states where we’ve identified cases.
“There are clinicians who do assert that some people with anorexia have a terminal form of the condition and should be eligible for assisted death. That’s a reality in the field.”
Roff almost died of anorexia as a teenager, when she was in hospital for 18 months and weighed less than five stone. She is in “no doubt” that she would have chosen assisted suicide if it were legal at the time.
“This isn’t just a hypothetical or a theoretical risk. This bill is not fit for purpose, as written”, Roff continued.
“Some physicians will consider them [anorexia sufferers] terminally ill and, in the case of the Scottish bill, say that they’re likely to suffer a premature death, because the physical consequences associated linked with their mental illness are likely to bring about their death.”
A study co-authored by Roff found 60 instances of people with eating disorders having their lives ended by assisted suicide. 19 of these confirmed cases included specific details about the patients, all women, with 32 per cent aged under 30, and 61 per cent had anorexia.
Last year, psychiatrist and bioethicist Scott Kim warned that the “eligibility criteria in psychiatric euthanasia depends much more on doctors’ opinions’”, and terminal anorexia is “not a scientific criteria”.
MSPs will vote on McArthur’s bill today at Holyrood. A similar bill for England and Wales is set to be debated and voted on this Friday in Westminster.
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