10
September
2015
|
14:49
Europe/London
EXPERT COMMENT: Assisted Dying Bill
Friday is the second reading debate on Rob Marris's Private Members Bill on Assisted Dying. In general terms it is the same as the Bill brought before Parliament by Lord Falconer before the election.
Dr Iain Brassington, a senior lecturer in bioethics and medical Law at The University of Manchester, is available for interview.
Dr Iain Brassington: "If passed, the Act would make it legally permissible for some medical staff to provide for a few people the means for them to end their own lives. To qualify for such assistance, those people must be terminally ill. In this respect, Marris's Bill (like Falconer's) differs from that brought before Parliament by Lord Joffe in 2004 - in that Bill, there had been a requirement that patients be suffering unbearably from a terminal illness. More recent Bills have dispensed with the suffering criterion.
"The major worry that assisted dying Bills face is that patients may be coerced, howsoever subtly, towards dying when that is not what they truly want. For this reason, it is important that any law has safeguards built into it, while remaining flexible enough to deal with real-world situations.
“The Marris Bill does have a number of such safeguards, including the requirement for a declaration by the High Court that the request for assistance is valid, and a 14-day ’cooling off’ period between that declaration and the provision of assistance. It should also be noted that, under the current law, a patient could be coerced into refusing life-sustaining treatment: if coercion is a threat, it is already there.
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The major worry that assisted dying Bills face is that patients may be coerced, howsoever subtly, towards dying when that is not what they truly want. For this reason, it is important that any law has safeguards built into it, while remaining flexible enough to deal with real-world situations.
Dr Ian Brassington
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"Assisted Dying of one form or another is now practiced in an increasing number of legislatures - notably The Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon, and Washington State. Whether the mood in Britain is for a change in the law is less clear: attempts to legalise assisted dying in Scotland have been rejected, and it is possible that the same will happen in the Commons. It would not be a surprise if this Bill never became law. But it would not be a moral disaster by any means if it did.”