Thursday, January 28, 2010

Kay Gilderdale: the beginning of the rest of her life

By Neil Tweedie
The Telegraph


Kay Gilderdale is beginning the rest of her life. For the first time in 18 years she has experienced something like relief, the shadow cast by her daughter’s tormented life, and the traumatic manner of its end, lifted at last.

It could have been so different. Mrs Gilderdale, 55, might have been beginning a sentence for attempted murder on Monday, the latest example of Britain’s confused policy on assisted suicide. Last week, Frances Inglis was jailed for nine years for administering a lethal dose of heroin to her brain-damaged son in a not-wholly-dissimilar example of mercy killing. Yet, a few days later, Mrs Gilderdale walked free from Lewes Crown Court, despite admitting that she had helped her daughter, Lynn, to die.

What saved her was a jury, which accepted that she had acted in what she imagined to be the best interests of her daughter. Acquitted of attempted murder, Mrs Gilderdale was given a conditional discharge for the offence of assisting a suicide. The judge queried the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service to proceed with the more serious charge, and there the issue of assisted suicide rests for the time being, in a haze of doubt and inconsistency.

Lynn Gilderdale was 31 when she tried to kill herself in December 2008. It was her second attempt, her first being in 2007, when she took an overdose of morphine.
For 17 years she had endured a twilight life, confined to bed at home, shielded by curtains from the natural light she was unable to bear. Lynn suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome, better known as ME, a condition greeted with scepticism in some quarters for the absence of a clear physiological cause, but which produced the most disastrous symptoms in her.

Unable to move or speak, fed through a tube inserted into her nose, and sustained by a cocktail of drugs, she eventually decided enough was enough.

10 comments:

cinderkeys said...

I can't even imagine what Lynn or Kay Gilderdale went through, and I hope to god I never find out.

Anonymous said...

the truth about the abuse of Sophie Mirza has finally hit the national press Dr Speedy

ttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7008987.ece


- how many more deaths and wasted lives will it take before the neglect, abuse and contempt we are treated with stops?

Anonymous said...

Sophie's full story is here:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4628351911149999835&postID=5319659200883354378

here's Criona on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZMpvtD3rg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_T5ylWUv4

those responsible for the abuse have never been brought to justice

Anonymous said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/dr-crippen-legalising-assisted-suicide

Dr Crippen the Ignoramus mouths off about in the biased Guardian again:

"A caring mother who kills her daughter who is suffering from "myalgic encephalomyelitis", a condition that many doctors only recognise as an inappropriately named psychiatric illness, is found not guilty of murder"

but the bit he wrote that was left off the online version is:

"It is incomprehensible that she was found not guilty."

INCOMPREHENSIBLE ONLY TO HIM.

Anonymous said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/default.stm

Kay on helping her daughter to die

Anonymous said...

Joke of the day Dr Speedy

http://meagenda.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/imperial-college-london-to-offer-200-xmrv-test/

Wessely's lot are offering something they call XMRV tests

well, it would be funny but some people will take this seriously and waste their money....

Anonymous said...

posted on Phoenix Rising forum:

Historic XMRV Negative Test Unveiled!

HAVE YOU got something you absolutely have to look for, but really, really, really don't want to find?

ARE YOU a healthcare professional with client populations in desperate need of the kind of reassurance only a negative test result can provide?

DO YOU stand to lose a whole lot of money and credibility if half a million people you said were malingerers turn out to have an infectious retrovirus?

If you answered "Yes, oh god please, help me, help me" to any of these questions, then you obviously need a world class Retrovirus Insurance Policy. Luckily for you, the solution to all your problems is at hand: the world's very first Express XMRV Negative Test from Weasely, Whitewash, Chaldatan and Sharke.

The only XMRV Test in the world to offer 100% guaranteed results!

Do away with expensive False Positives!

The Weasely-McCure-Inferial (WMI) test guarantees you absolutely no false positives - or your money back!

Why spend extra on expensive foreign tests full of false positives when everybody knows there's no XMRV in the UK anyway?!

Order the WMI's 'XMRV' Negative Test Express Today and claim your 67% discount!

Hurry - this quite literally unbelievable offer simply cannot last!


Peace of mind, and long-term financial security, for just £200 per subject? Trust the professionals - Weasely, Whitewash, Chaldatan and Sharke are the sole licensed customers and suppliers of the WMI's Express XMRV Negative Test, bringing with them the reassurance that comes from a long and spot-less record of failing to find sufficient evidence for X.

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Anonymous said...

OK, I have the Imperial College XMRV test worked out now. I thought it was funny but it's not.

It's going to be the new NHS test for XMRV. Like the NHS Lyme disease test, it is designed not to find anything.

As with Lyme disease, only this test's result will be accepted as proof, private testing will not. Those testing negative with this test but positive by private testing will be denied National Health treatment, sickness benefits and private insurance pay outs.

it will save the health service, the DWP and the insurance companies a fortune

and who work for them? White, Sharpe, Chalder, Wessely etc etc ........

Anonymous said...

that's just my conjecture, I don't know it's going to be the NHS test, but I bet you a squillion jam doughnuts it will be Dr Speedy

Anonymous said...

http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/?s1=THERE%27S+NO+XMRV+IN+THE+UK&s2=NOW+STOP+WORRYING&s3=AND+ENJOY+YOUR+CBT

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