Questions, questions

I feel of late as though I've been surrounded by a phrase. I'm still trying to decide what it really means. The phrase is "terminally ill". Yes, you too will have heard the phrase in relation to the releases of Ronnie Biggs & Megrahi. But what is "terminally ill"?

My immediate reaction is that surely life itself is a terminal illness. After all, the one certainty in life is death. Some I'm sure would regard life as an illness. Certainly for some life involves long term illness & disability. So why isn't life regarded as a "terminal illness"?

More usually, an illness seems to be regarded as "terminal" when the medical profession can say, with a certain amount of confidence, that death will occur within a certain time span. So did MK, our late friend, have a "terminal illness" the moment he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease? He lived on for another 3 years or so.

But doctors sometimes get it wrong. Miracles do happen. Some people with "incurable" illnesses have been known to live on far beyond expected, even having "incurable" tumours disappear as mysteriously as they arrived. Is this a case of a "terminal illness" ceasing to be "terminal"?

Or is an illness regarded as "terminal" when life expectancy is down to a few months, a few weeks even? If so, at what point does the illness change its definition to "terminal"?

My attitude to the two criminals released differs. Ronnie Biggs I can only regard as a rather unrepentant thug. A man was viciously beaten in the Great Train Robbery. Ronnie Biggs has never shown any remorse. He quickly escaped from prison & spent the rest of his life in luxury, cocking a snoot at the police. He only returned to Britain & prison in order to receive the services of the NHS, not for reasons of remorse or punishment.

Megrahi, on the other hand, has spent several years in prison. There seems to be some question hanging over him as to whether he was even guilty of the crime. In Scotland he was far away from his family & home. My only question lies in whether he is expected to die in months or years. I know people can live with prostrate cancer for a long time, years even. I have no problem with him being released if he is indeed in his last months of life. Compassion demands it, regardless of whether he was guilty & showed no compassion himself to the victims at Locherbie. Years of life ahead, though, is a different matter. Then I feel he ought to have stayed in prison until his illness had progressed further & let out nearer the time of his death.