Over my quarter-of-a-century of being a doctor, I have overseen thousands of deaths. For a busy hospital physician, this is not an unusual number. Helping people die is a core part of our job.
In the Commons today, the Assisted Dying Bill gets its first reading. But the debate about this bill is missing a crucial detail: assisted dying is already something of a reality. For those in unsalvageable agony, I like to think it happens almost automatically. Neither people, nor the NHS, being perfect, there will be errors and omissions. But I’m confident that assisted dying, in a sense, happens often already, and I speak from experience.