A man who started the assisted suicide process by contacting an assisted suicide clinic after doctors misdiagnosed him with motor neurone disease, is warning MSPs that “people will die unnecessarily” under Scotland’s assisted suicide Bill. The remarkable story comes amidst growing concerns about the Bill’s broad definition of terminal illness.
As MSPs prepare to debate and vote on Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill next week on 13 May, Peter Sefton-Williams, 72, a retired journalist, has warned MSPs that if they “go ahead with this bill, they have to accept that people will die unnecessarily. There will be mistakes and people will die. So is it worth it?”.
Last year, Sefton-Williams was told by his doctor “there is no doubt whatsoever that you have Motor Neurone Disease and that you typically can live between one and a half to four or five years”, and was also told to “not make any plans past six months’ time”. As a result, Sefton-Williams was “absolutely terrified” and immediately began making plans to end his life at the Swiss assisted suicide clinic, Dignitas.
“The day after the diagnosis, I contacted Dignitas, because they said it would take six months to do the paperwork. So I thought, ‘I have to do this in a hurry’”, he said.
As his panic subsided, Sefton-Williams abandoned these plans, and he began to notice his symptoms were not becoming worse but were actually improving. After seeking the opinion of a third specialist, he was told, “this is not Motor Neurone Disease, this is Multifocal Motor Neuropathy”.
“It’s very rare, it mimics the early stages of Motor Neurone Disease. But it’s a mild disease, nobody dies of it, and it’s largely curable”, he added.
Under McArthur’s Bill, an application for assisted suicide would require the approval of two doctors, but Sefton-Williams, who received his diagnosis from two of the country’s top specialists, pointed to his own experience as evidence that this was not an effective safeguard.
Sefton-Williams said “Do you just shrug your shoulders and say, ‘Well, that’s life, mistakes happen’? Because mistakes are going to happen, and I’m living proof of that”.
“The lesson is that doctors make mistakes. Doctors quite frequently make mistakes”.
“Doctors are fallible. It’s no use saying they’re the kind of gold standard and will always get it right, because they don’t always get it right. As my case shows, I could have thought that was a way out and I would now be dead. Whereas, as far as I can tell, there’s very little wrong with me”, he added.
Sefton-Williams, who said his illness “is not a terminal illness at all”, would have likely been granted an assisted suicide under the McArthur Bill after the two specialists’ initial motor neurone disease diagnosis. He commented that it would have been “absolutely horrific” if he had opted for an assisted suicide. “The idea that I could have [ended my life] is absolutely horrific and the thing that most disturbs me is that nobody would have known”.
“What people would have said is, ‘Peter took a brave decision. He wished to die with dignity, and that’s what he did,’ and everyone would be satisfied that it had been a good outcome”.
“That’s what the world would think. But it wouldn’t have been a good outcome. I would have died unnecessarily”.