WITH the impending vote on assisted suicide, supportive opinion abounds in the media, enhanced by genuinely emotive examples of personal trauma faced by some terminally ill people and their families.

But surprisingly absent or downplayed are the extremely real and fundamental counter arguments.

Why should an elderly person I know dread the prospect?

She is sufficiently well informed to understand the implications of change and the potential consequences as seen in Holland, Oregon and especially Belgium where adults and children are “euthanised”, sometimes without their agreement or permission, by mobile units. Why? Because of the predictable, unstoppable slippery slope effect - that inevitable tendency towards the erosion/evasion of values, the law and its “safeguards”.

Of course, (impregnable) safeguards are always guaranteed. So is their failure. The most common cliché is “it won’t happen again”. What of those reassuring safeguards on bankers’ bonuses, MPs expenses and the abuse of the vulnerable in public/private care?

May I ask any advocate of assisted suicide to explain to readers how he/she would draft a law, guaranteed to be totally efficacious in preventing that insidious, hidden mental impulse/pressure towards assisted suicide that might be felt by some vulnerable person due to corrosive illness affecting family or to feelings of worthlessness or loneliness or ‘I owe it to my family to die’?

Finally, how long before a doctor or nurse is fired for refusing on grounds of conscience, to terminate a human life as part of an NHS contract?

It’s on the way. But we do want it?

Michael Baldasera, Darlington.