Yesterday, the assisted dying bill was passed by the House of Commons. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, chose the same day to announce a major investment in genomics. He hopes that within a decade every newborn in England Wales will undergo comprehensive DNA screening with a view to predicting and preventing illness rather than diagnosing and treating it. It would also reduce pressure on the National Health Service and reduce costs.
My immediate reaction was that our Labour government seems to be clueless when it comes to the optics of its announcements. Whatever their intentions (and I have no doubt about the good intentions being shown here), if this bill and this proposal were both to become reality, they will have put in place the main building blocks for a new eugenics policy.
The advocates of assisted dying assure us that there is no possibility of a slide towards euthanasia. But the example of other democracies that have gone down this route suggests that once public opinion becomes accustomed to assisted dying for the terminally ill, it becomes easier to propose the same for those who have little or no quality of life. A less well-intentioned future government might well then take the additional step of extending it to the euthanasia of those who are deemed to be a burden on society because of their low quality of life.
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