Suicidal thoughts, much like mental health conditions, can affect anyone regardless of age, gender or background. In fact, suicide is often the result of an untreated mental health condition. Suicidal thoughts, although common, should not be considered normal and often indicate more serious issues. Each year,...
“Assisted dying” is a euphemism. It has no meaning in law but it means supplying lethal drugs to people who are terminally ill with the purpose of helping them to commit suicide. It is also contrary to every historic code of medical ethics including the Hippocratic...
There is huge pressure on British politicians to legalise assisted dying. However, doing so would represent a dangerous change in British criminal law. It would fundamentally alter the relationship between doctor and patient, giving doctors the power to kill as well as cure. Such immense responsibility...
The articles on assisted dying in The Economist are extremely helpful; even with those whom I disagree completely, I can have civilised and enlightening discussions. My opponents are, for the most part, well-motivated and willing to examine the opposition’s arguments. I agree with some of...
I’m not opposed to assisted dying because I believe that it will be extended to those who should not have it. (I think the idea that some people “deserve” access to assisted dying demands as much scrutiny as the idea of the “deserving” and the...
When I began working as a doctor early in the 1970s, end-of-life care was in its infancy. Cicely Saunders had just begun her pioneering work on what she called “total pain” and very few clinicians knew how to alleviate pain and distress in the dying....
SINCE 2002 Belgium has been one of the very few countries in the world in which doctors can perform euthanasia. Patients need to be in a hopeless state of constant and unbearable physical or mental pain that cannot be alleviated, or suffering as a result...
There is so much we get wrong in the provision of health and care services. Everyone has a story: of misdiagnosis, of receiving the wrong treatment, of hopeless gaps in communication or care. Sometimes such things happen through deliberate cruelty or neglect, but more often...
On Dec. 30, 2017, as snowflakes fell outside his window, my husband and the love of my life, J.J. Hanson, took his last breath. He was 36 years old. I was with him, holding our two young sons in my arms. We had known the day...
OPPOSITION to assisted dying is usually derided as being religious in nature, which is easier than confronting hard questions or inconvenient truths. It is easier to shut down “religious bigots” than to consider what they say, just as it is easier to use the term...