UK Health Radio Medical News Update - Assisted Dying

UK Health Radio Medical News Update

Legalising assisted dying would mean "less suffering not more deaths", a leading campaigner has said.  Lord Falconer, whose private members bill would make the practice for some terminally ill patients, legal was reported by the BBC as saying that  a "limited" change was needed to the law to give people a choice to die.

But Lord Tebbit who opposes the bill said that he was afraid that it would create "too much of a financial incentive for the taking of life".  Meanwhile the bill had its second reading in the Lords recently without a vote.

The proposed legislation would allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose to terminally ill patients who were judged to have less than six months to live.

Lord Falconer insisted that the "final decision would always be made by the patient", with safeguards in place that would prevent "abuse."

About 130 peers requested to speak in the debate that continued for almost 10 hours.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said that he is not "convinced" by the arguments for legalising assisted dying but the bill has won the backing of Lib Dem Care Minister Norman Lamb.

The legislation would allow a terminally ill, mentally competent adult, who was making the choice of his or her own free will and within strict legal safeguards, to request life-ending medicine from a doctor.

Two independent doctors would be required to agree that the patient had made an informed decision to die.

Lord Falconer said many people were so worried that if they asked their loved ones for help they would be  "implicating them in a criminal enterprise" so that many achieved their death "by hoarding pills or putting a plastic bag over their heads".

Legalising assisted dying, he argued would allow a "small number" of people who didn't want to "go through the last months, weeks, days and hours" of life to die with dignity.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said he had changed his mind about the issue and now believed that belief in assisted dying was "quite compatible" with being a Christian.

"When suffering is so great, when some patients already know that they are at the end of life, make repeated pleas to die, it seems a denial of the loving compassion that is the hallmark of Christianity to refuse to allow them to fulfil their clearly stated request." 

Amanda Thomas

UK Health Radio Medical News Update

Kindly sponsored by 1-stop-health-shop.com