In all the furore surrounding the case of Debbie Purdy, who has been fighting to clarify the law on whether her partner will face prosecution if he travels to Dignitas with her to help her commit suicide, a number of questions occur.

What sort of society do we now have, when somebody who wishes to kill themselves is shown beaming from ear to ear on the front page of almost every newspaper, and her case trumpeted as a triumph? What have we got ourselves into here?

Someone on the radio recently went against what has now become PC - ie it's OK to want to kill yourself and don't you dare say anything against the freedom of the individual - and questioned the whole Dignitas business. He queried whether assisted suicide really is 'death with dignity', or rather, is it not 'death by depression'?

I have been very impressed by an article in the Church of England newspaper last week by Michael Wenham, who has Motor Neurone Disease. He queries what seems to me to be an unexamined understanding of 'dignity' in the media. He says '''Dignity' itself is another word which is in danger of being hijacked. Why is taking a lethal dose more dignified than bravely, perhaps painfully, putting up with a disability or a terminal disease until the end? Is there less intrinsic dignity in being dependent than being in control? If so, it has dire implications for how we regard many of our fellow humans - as dignity has at its root the concept of worth."

His experience has taught him some unexpected lessons, he says.

* Life is a gift, not a 'right'.
* There's a freedom over not having control. He's letting go of 'choice' (another unexamined buzz word, in my opinion) and starting to welcome 'chance'.

He is discovering, he says, that an increasingly limited life can paradoxically be an increasingly rich one. And he concludes:

"I suspect that our society's insistence of rights and on personal autonomy, of which the campaign for assisted suicide is a symptom, is progressively impoverishing all our lives, as well as endangering some. I believe we need to beware and to speak up."

Well, he should know.

His book about his experience of MND is called 'My Donkeybody - Living with a body that no longer obeys you'.

(posted by Gill, co-author)