Medical Ethics: A legal framework for assisted suicide?
Should people who help a loved one to commit suicide be prosecuted?
The Commission on Assisted Dying has recommended that laws be established to allow people to assist suicide in a limited range of cases.
Anyone seeking assisted suicide would need to be over the age of 18, terminally ill with less than 12 months to live, and not subject to any sort of mental impairment. The person would need to be assessed by two doctors before the decision would be allowed, and the patient would need to be able to administer the euthanising drugs themselves.
This would impact a relatively limited number of people – excluding those with dementia, and those with long term chronic conditions, but would still be a huge change for British law.
At the moment it is illegal under the 1961 Suicide Act to help anyone to commit suicide, but the Director of Public Prosecutions has indicated that it may not always be appropriate to prosecute someone who has given such help, depending on the circumstances. This situation is considered unsatisfactory by groups on both sides of the debate as it leaves a great deal of uncertainty, both in principle and in practice.
The Commission has heard evidence from 1300 sources during its year long enquiry, but some groups refused to take part because they objected to the fact that the panel was set up and funded by campaigners who would like to see a change in the law.
The government has indicated that it has no plans to change the law in this area, but that any vote in parliament on the issue would be a ‘matter of conscience’ for individual MPs and not subject to government policy.
You can read more about this story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2012/jan/05/assisted-suicide-autonomous-choice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/01/mary-warnock-assisted-suicide?newsfeed=true
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16210769
Get stuck into lots more Medical Ethics debates at the Debate Chamber Medicine events – click here for more information.