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A former Supreme Court judge has come under fire after telling a woman with stage 4 bowel cancer that her life was “less valuable” than others during an on-screen discussion about the price of coronavirus lockdowns.
Jonathan Sumption, a prominent anti-lockdown activist, made the remarks during a BBC One program on Sunday while responding to a question posed by host Nicky Campbell about whether the lockdown was “punishing too many for the greater good.”
Explaining about The Big Questions He did not believe that “all lives have the same value”, the former judge said that the lives of his children and grandchildren “are worth more because they have much more ahead of them.”
Brought to the discussion as a younger person with a debilitating illness, Deborah James, 39, who presents the BBC You, me and the big C podcast, said, “With all due respect, I’m the person you say their life is not worth.”
Lord Sumption, 72, who sat on the Supreme Court until 2018, interrupted Ms James, who has stage 4 metastatic bowel cancer, saying, “I didn’t say her life was not valuable, I said it was less valuable. “
Ms. James responded, “Who are you to value life? In my opinion, and I believe in many others, life is sacred and I don’t think we should make those decisions. All life is worth saving, regardless of what life people are living.
“I am fully aware and have seen it first hand and said goodbye to best friends in terms of the assurance that Covid is causing, but at the same time I am incredibly grateful to be someone who is kept alive thanks to the NHS. “
Shocked viewers took to social media to discuss the exchange, with some calling Lord Sumption “horrible,” “inhuman,” and “morally bankrupt.”
Human rights lawyer Adam Wagner said: “This is the figurehead of the anti-lockdown movement, it seems inhuman, almost grotesque.”
Employment and personal injury attorney David Green said “I would change every brain cell in my head to avoid being as horrible as [Sumption] obviously it is ”.
Meanwhile, NHS mental health doctor Benjamin Janaway called the comments “abominable”, “thoughtless” and “lacking in empathy.”
Lord Sumption, however, had some people on his side. Controversial talkRadio host Julia Hartley-Brewer called the yelling at peers “garbage.”
“If you had the opportunity to save a single person from a fire and you had to choose between an eight-year-old and an 80-year-old, you know exactly which one you would save,” he said.
“It does not mean that all lives have no value, it is a relative value when difficult decisions must be made.”
Lord Sumption has since said that the comments were “taken out of context”, telling the Daily mail : “I strongly object to any suggestion that I was inferring that Miss James’s life was less valuable because she had cancer.
“I thought he was responding to my earlier comments about protecting older people through a total lockdown that is causing immense harm to young people who are not affected.”
Seeming to blame the misunderstanding on video technology, the couple spoke up, saying: “Yes [Ms James] She has misunderstood that I can only apologize to her then, as it was not my intention to suggest that she was less valuable. Sometimes in video links it can be difficult to hear what the other person is saying. “
During the BBC program, Lord Sumption was also challenged by guests Catherine Foot, from the Center for Aging Better, and Calum Semple, professor of children’s health and sprout medicine at the University of Liverpool, as well as the show’s host, Mr Campbell. .
While Foot said he “shuddered” at Lord Sumption’s suggestion that all lives are not equal, Professor Semple said the former judge’s statements that the government’s action had “virtually no impact” on rates of mortality were “completely wrong.”
Campbell responded to Lord Sumption’s argument that only the “elderly and vulnerable” should isolate themselves, saying that this was a “completely simplistic” solution because vulnerability includes a broad spectrum of people, of all ages.
The outspoken Lord Sumption has criticized restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus during the pandemic, calling such measures “tyrannical” and “a monument to mass hysteria and insanity.”
