Experience of treating many patients over 30 years has convinced me that doctors must accept death as a natural end to life and avoid inappropriate interventions, but that legalising euthanasia, whether indirectly, in the form of assisted suicide, or directly, via lethal injection, is a dangerous step too far.
Proposals to allow “assisted dying”, while undoubtedly well intended, have an air of unreality about them that is worrying to anyone who works with seriously ill people. They assume the existence of a perfect world – a world in which all terminally ill people are entirely clear-headed and make life-or-death decisions on completely rational grounds; and a world in which all doctors know their patients well and have limitless time and skill to assess requests for euthanasia.
The real world of clinical practice just isn’t like that.
Read it all.
Ilora Finlay: Assisted suicide is fine in a perfect world, but we don't live or die in one
Experience of treating many patients over 30 years has convinced me that doctors must accept death as a natural end to life and avoid inappropriate interventions, but that legalising euthanasia, whether indirectly, in the form of assisted suicide, or directly, via lethal injection, is a dangerous step too far.
Proposals to allow “assisted dying”, while undoubtedly well intended, have an air of unreality about them that is worrying to anyone who works with seriously ill people. They assume the existence of a perfect world – a world in which all terminally ill people are entirely clear-headed and make life-or-death decisions on completely rational grounds; and a world in which all doctors know their patients well and have limitless time and skill to assess requests for euthanasia.
The real world of clinical practice just isn’t like that.
Read it all.