If it’s about patient safety we should change the law on assisted dying.
That some people should have to suffer at the end of life on account of other people’s beliefs doesn’t hold much water with the majority of Britons.
That some people should have to suffer at the end of life on account of other people’s beliefs doesn’t hold much water with the majority of Britons.
Three years ago today I queued up outside the House of Lords with Debbie Purdy and her husband Omar Puente to hear how the Law Lords would rule in her case; asking for clarity on how decisions were taken on whether to prosecute in cases of assisted dying.
New research demonstrates that the frequency of ending of a patient’s life in the absence of an explicit request (non-voluntary euthanasia) has not increased in the Netherlands since the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.
A survey, published by the Office of National Statistics, indicates that in most cases end-of-life care is being delivered to a good standard.
As a nineteen year-old, death is not a common topic of conversation I have with my friends. However, since studying the issues of life and death in Religious Studies, I was introduced to the assisted dying debate. As a result I have become increasingly aware of the need for a change in the law that would let terminally ill people have the right to choose not to prolong their pain.
Assisted dying is not an easy subject. It evokes deeply-held views and beliefs both for and against. There are powerful arguments on both sides, and in the main they are made conscientiously, carefully, and in the knowledge that others will fundamentally disagree. But disagreement, however deeply felt, is not in my view a good reason to avoid a subject as important as this.
Tomorrow the BMA’s Annual Representatives Meeting (ARM) will vote on whether the BMA should adopt a position of neutrality on assisted dying.
On Wednesday the Daily Mail reported the claims of a Professor of Neurology, Patrick Pullicino, who argued that ‘doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly’.
In a historic ruling yesterday, a judge in the Supreme Court of British Colombia, Canada struck down part of Canada’s law on assisted suicide, and ruled that a terminally ill woman, Gloria Taylor, could be assisted to die by a doctor.
Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) have been calling on our medical bodies to take a neutral stance on assisted dying for a long time.