Doctors oppose assisted suicide
Updated on 01 July 2009
Doctors stuck by their opposition to assisted suicide in the light of high-profile cases involving the Swiss Dignitas clinic.
Medics attending the British Medical Association's annual conference in Liverpool voted overwhelmingly against supporting a motion "allowing the choice of an assisted death by patients who are terminally ill and who have mental capacity".
They also refused to back calls to lift the threat of prosecution from friends and relatives who accompany loved ones abroad to die.
The vote does not mean doctors believe relatives should automatically be prosecuted. Their stance shows they think the law should stay as it is.
In December, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the parents of paralysed rugby player, Daniel James, would not face prosecution.
James, 23, is believed to have been the youngest Briton to die at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where he went with his parents, Mark and Julie.
The CPS considered bringing charges under the Suicide Act against his parents but decided a prosecution would not be in the public interest.
Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, lost her Appeal Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide in February. She took her case to the Law Lords in June but they have yet to make a decision. She is thinking about ending her life at a clinic abroad, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK.
Proposing the motion at the BMA, Dr Kailash Chand, a doctor from Tameside, said it was necessary to protect relatives and friends from the fear of prosecution.
"The terminally ill, we know, are travelling abroad to countries where the right to end life is recognised as lawful," he said. "We must not prosecute loved ones for encouraging or assisting suicide when they help the terminally-ill individual travel abroad to end his or her life."
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