Palliative care doctors in UK say assisted suicide bill rests on ‘misconceptions’

Palliative care. / Credit: Photographee.eu/Shutterstock

London, England, Dec 4, 2024 / 14:30 pm (CNA).

The case for assisted dying rests on dangerous misconceptions about the reality of death and dying, according to leading palliative care doctors across England and Wales.

Following a Westminster debate on Nov. 29 in which members of England’s Parliament (MPs) voted in favor of legalizing assisted suicide, 15 palliative care specialists voiced their concerns in a letter to The Times, published Dec. 3.

Reflecting on the historic vote, the signatories wrote that “anyone watching the debate would have been forgiven for thinking that most deaths involve great suffering.”  

“While we do not deny ‘bad deaths’ can happen, most reflect failure of care,” the doctors wrote. “As the bill progresses through Parliament we must ensure that this is accompanied by progress in understanding ‘ordinary dying.’”

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was initiated by MP Kim Leadbeater and allows terminally-ill adults aged 18 or over the right to request medically assisted suicide.

The bill passed its Second Reading last Friday, with 330 MPs voting in favor of it and 275 against it.

The Association of Palliative Medicine in the U.K. is opposed to changing the law on assisted suicide in England and Wales.

In their letter to the Times, the palliative medical experts highlighted a number of other misconceptions underpinning the debate before the vote, including the idea that people regularly resort to starving themselves to death and that covert euthanasia is already happening across England and Wales.

“Several MPs suggested that many people resort to starving themselves to death, which we believe misunderstands the expected reduction in oral intake in dying people as the body shuts down,” the doctors wrote. 

“Other misconceptions concerned the use of morphine to treat pain and suffering at the end of life, with the conflicting suggestions that there is both a limit to the amount of morphine that can be safely used and that high doses of morphine are already used as ‘covert’ assisted dying,” they said.

Pro-life campaigners are now redoubling their strategic efforts to ensure the bill falls at the next hurdle.

A statement released by Right to Life UK on Nov. 29 read: “A large number of MPs who voted for the bill indicated that they were only doing so with a view to debating the bill at further stages. As the vote margin was 55 votes, it would only take 28 MPs to move their vote to opposing the bill for it to be voted down at Third Reading. This provides a clear path for those opposing the bill to defeat it at Third Reading.”