We elect our politicians to take account from experts of a wider range of factors than the will of the people on specific issues, such as capital punishment and assisted suicide. In the case of the latter, almost the entire medical profession is arraigned against proposals for legalised assisted suicide, in the shape of trade unions and professional bodies such as the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council and the Royal College of Physicians.<\/p>\n
Doctors’ resistance is rooted in the prospect of the administration of death as a clinical practice. It is one thing, they argue, to provide an assessment of a patient’s health for insurance purposes or fitness to travel; quite another and wholly compromising of a professional duty of care to do so as a justification for ending a life.<\/p>\n
That is partly why a simple majority in a public poll, for whom the prospect of a lethal dose from a doctor is a logical extension of consumer choice, cannot be the sole or even principal guide for changing law in matters of life and death. There is too much at stake. And not just for the sick and dying and for those who care for them, but for all of us.<\/p>\n