Over 3,400 medical professionals have warned that assisted suicide cannot be introduced safely while the NHS is broken.
Late last night, the Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater, published her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill ahead of MPs voting on it on 29 November, leaving MPs with barely two weeks to scrutinise this complex and wide-ranging legislation.
A large group of medical professionals have written an open letter to the Prime Minister expressing their concerns about the introduction of assisted suicide in the context of a struggling NHS, which, they argue, could put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives.
In the open letter, 2,038 doctors, 905 nurses, and 462 other healthcare workers warn that the “NHS is broken, with health and social care in disarray. Palliative care is woefully underfunded and many lack access to specialist provision”.
The letter signatories include 23 medical directors at hospices and NHS trusts, as well as 53 eminent medical professors and the former Welsh chief medical officer, Dame Deirdre Hine. It addresses the Prime Minister, who is supportive of a change in the law on assisted suicide.
The letter says that the “thought of assisted suicide being introduced and managed safely at such a time is remarkably out of touch with the gravity of the current mental health crisis and pressures on staff”.
“It is impossible for any Government to draft assisted suicide laws which include protection from coercion and from future expansion”, they added, making reference to the expansion of the euthanasia and assisted suicide law in Canada, which now permits euthanasia for people with disabilities who are not terminally ill.
The medics also argue in favour of keeping the current law, which acts as a “protection for the vulnerable”, and that “[a]ny change would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse”.
They go on to argue that, if assisted suicide were made legal, “it would undermine the trust the public places in physicians; and it would send a clear message to our frail, elderly and disabled patients about the value that society places on them as people”.
A change in the law on assisted suicide, they argue, will “affect[] us all” since there will be some patients who would never have considered it, were it not suggested to them.
“As healthcare professionals, we have a legal duty of care for the safety and wellbeing of our patients. We, the undersigned, will never take our patients’ lives – even at their request. But for the sake of us all, and for future generations, we ask do not rush into hasty legislation but instead fund excellent palliative care”, they add.
Medical professionals oppose assisted suicide Bill
There is strong opposition to introducing assisted suicide from doctors who specialise in working with people with incurable conditions at the end of their lives.
A survey of palliative care doctors who are members of the Association for Palliative Medicine found that 82% oppose the introduction of assisted suicide. The results of the Association for Palliative Medicine survey have been mirrored in a more recent survey of doctors by the British Medical Association, which found that 83% of palliative care doctors oppose a change in the law to introduce assisted suicide, while only 6% supported such a change.
The vote on the Bill comes as many elderly people go into winter with their Winter Fuel Payment cut by the Government, as palliative care services are in crisis, with Marie Curie reporting that 100,000 people are dying each year needing palliative care but not receiving it, and a wider healthcare system also in a state of crisis, with Labour’s own Health Secretary describing the NHS as “broken”.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “Medics are right to object to this dangerous and ill-thought-out Bill in such strong terms. If made legal, assisted suicide will do great damage to the relationship between doctor and patient. Doctors would no longer exclusively be concerned with healing their patients and the relief of symptoms, but will also, under certain conditions, enable their suicide”.
“This proposed legislation effectively says that some people’s lives under some conditions are not worth living and that there is no hope for them. It is a disaster in waiting and MPs must vote against it”.
