Time to legalise assisted dying?: BMA should take an active role, whatever that may be

Time to legalise assisted dying?

Editor—Delamothe states that the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has a neutral stance on the issue of assisted dying. This is no longer correct. At a meeting of the college council in June 2005 it was decided, by a clear majority, that the college could no longer maintain a neutral stance on the subject of assisted dying. To determine a definitive position on whether to oppose any...

Should assisted dying be legalised?

When an individual facing intractable pain is given an estimate of a few months to live, does hastening death become a viable and legitimate alternative for willing patients? Has the time come for physicians to do away with the traditional notion of healthcare as maintaining or improving physical and mental health, and instead accept their own limitations by facilitating death when requested? T...

Should the law on assisted dying be changed? Yes.

The case for legalising assisted dying for people with terminal illness is easily stated. Unbearable suffering, prolonged by medical care, and inflicted on a dying patient who wishes to die, is unequivocally a bad thing. It is one of the fundamental principles of medicine that you should be allowed to determine what is in your own best interest when you are of sound mind. Nobody else’s views sh...

BMA end-of-life care and physician-assisted dying project.

I-14: Assisted Reproduction and Religion What Consideration Should Be and Should Not Be Relevant,

Several important issues are pertinent to an ethical discussion of the new technology today grouped under the name Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART). This is a moral imperative because each of us must decide what is to be considered ethically acceptable in assisted reproduction. Reflecting on the ethical dimension of ‘creating’ a new human life can play a major role in ensuring that in eac...