Several doctors and other health professionals in Scotland have called for MSPs to vote against proposed laws allowing assisted suicide.
Work is already underway on legislation that will permit assisted dying for those who are terminally ill and mentally competent. It is the third attempt to introduce laws to legalise assisted dying in Scotland.
A letter signed by more than 30 doctors and sent to MSPs said: ‘As junior doctors in Scotland, we oppose any form of legislation which seeks to promote assisted suicide and will not participate if it becomes legal.’
The letter was co-authored by Christopher Marshall, a 24-year-old palliative care worker at Borders General Hospital and Ed Tulloch, a 30-year-old trainee GP in Fife.
They wrote: ‘Legalising assisted suicide will undoubtedly place untold pressure on people who are vulnerable, disabled, or elderly, to end their lives prematurely. Some may even feel it is their ‘‘duty to die’’. These are people we have gone to great lengths to protect and support during the pandemic.’
The letter refers to research from Oregon in the US, where 59% of people choosing to end their lives under assisted dying laws fear being a burden to family or friends and that this was an influencing factor.
The doctors added: ‘We believe that modern palliative medicine in conjunction with healthy trusting relationships are sufficient to bring dignity in dying.’
Separately, CARE for Scotland warned: ‘No safeguards could ever prevent the invisible pressure on already sick and vulnerable people to consider such an option.’
And Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, warned MSPs that many doctors and nurses will not want to practise in Scotland and will move to England or Northern Ireland if assisted suicide is legalised.
The proposed legislation has the backing of Dignity in Dying Scotland, Friends at the End and the Humanist Society Scotland.
