PREYING ON THE VULNERABLE:

I refused to help my father die: The chattering classes must not be allowed to drive us to suicide (Cristina Odone, 18 Oct 2010, Daily Telegraph)

"Put me out of my misery." The words were my father's. He lay, body riddled with septicaemia, suffering horribly in a hospital ward, as the rude, rough nurses were too busy with paperwork to relieve his pain. I couldn't believe this was my father, the man who had devoted his life to keeping his son Lorenzo alive. The story of how he and my stepmother had struggled 24/7 so that Lorenzo, robbed of his faculties by adrenoleukodystrophy, should live without pain or indignity, had been so remarkable that Hollywood made a movie about it, Lorenzo's Oil.

Yet now he wanted out. I could see that what would kill him faster than any disease was the realisation that he was dependent on unsympathetic strangers, and stuck in a disorientating and unfamiliar place: he felt humiliated, vulnerable and out of control.

But I didn't want to kill him. I wanted to kill the men and women around him who were failing so manifestly in caring for him. If they had been doing their job properly, they could have controlled his pain, treated him with respect, even maybe engaged with him to raise his spirits. My father didn't need assisted suicide, he needed assistance.

That night, I pleaded with him to focus his extraordinary spirit on life, not death. He pulled through, miraculously.