New healthcare lobby for assisted dying reform set to challenge British Medical Association position
Mon 4 Oct 2010 11:57 • Around the web,campaigns,ethics,health,society
Leading doctors who endorse assisted dying for the terminally ill will this week launch an unprecedented campaign to change the law on the right to die.
Healthcare Professionals for Change, a group of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, says it wants to challenge bodies such as the British Medical Association, which opposes any change in the law that would allow others to help terminally ill people to die.
The group is the first professional body of its kind to be set up with the explicit aim of changing the 1961 Suicide Act, which forbids such assistance.
The group will be chaired by Dr Ann McPherson, a GP and fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and of Green College, Oxford, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. “By taking a hostile approach to a change in the law on assisted dying, medical bodies such as the BMA and the Royal College of Physicians are failing to adequately reflect the views of all their members,” she said. “Many of us believe dying patients should not have to suffer against their wishes at the end of life. Alongside access to good quality end-of-life care, we believe that terminally ill, mentally competent patients should be able to choose an assisted death, subject to safeguards.”
Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/03/right-to-die-assisted-suicide
The British Humanist Association campaigns for reform of the law on assisted dying.
I am a retired consultant geriatrician and have metastatic colonic cancer.
I entirely endorse the views of Ann McPherson as reported in the article in this weekend’s Observer (3/10/10).
Any support I can give to this new professional grouping ? Any formal membership yet established?
I have been hoping to see this change for some time. My whole professional life was aimed at helping people in distress so it was always painful to watch the suffering of the terminally ill and only be able at best to put them in a coma. Having reached aripe old age I am hopeful that I am one of the lucky ones who will not need this service but I would not wishto deprive others who do. Last year I helped my neighbour get through her last week surrounded by hospice staff,who visited her at home, GP s and district nurses.It was for her a horrendous ordeal.
The Healthcare Professionals for Change Group will be officially launched on Wednesday 13 October, at which point its website will go live:
http://www.healthcareprofessionalsforchange.org.uk. In the meantime, those who wish to register their interest in the group can email office@healthcareprofessionalsforchange.org.uk
Professor Joe Collier (founding member of Healthcare Professionals for Change)