Please also see our home page for more up-to-date information.

Please, Not Doctors

Commenting on an editorial in the British Medical Journal by Professors Len and Lesley Doyal which favours active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (BMJ, Vol 323, pp 1079-80), Dr Richard Lamerton, Medical Director of the Hospice of the Valleys, said:

"This is exactly the sort of foggy thinking that makes the debate on euthanasia so alarming. These writers are asking for something Mrs Pretty did not ask for: killing by doctors. Why does it need doctors? Killing people is easy. Let politicians do it, or policemen, or social workers, or undertakers, but not doctors, who would be forever after be feared by vulnerable disabled patients who could not be sure of the doctor's good intentions. They would feel they ought to get of out the way, and society would be endorsing that view.

- end -

For further information, please ring 020 7730 2800.