Specialists in palliative care and pain management whose interviews are featured in this report confirmed that they see cases where a person’s suffering cannot be relieved despite their best efforts. What right do you have to refuse someone with a terminal illness, who has the mental capacity to make a choice, the means to avoid an agonising death?Īt the end of life, some dying people experience severe pain and other symptoms that result in suffering.Ĭrucially, this suffering occurs even when high-quality specialist palliative care is present, meaning improving the provision of care will not address this problem. If you are in doubt about the need for an assisted dying law I urge you to read this report and when you’ve reached the end ask yourself this: To still deny it altogether to dying people in the UK who cannot be helped by palliative care, to force them to undergo unbearable physical and psychological trauma instead, is a moral outrage. Of course it should be tightly regulated and operate under strict safeguards, as it has done in many places around the world since the end of the last century. Of course assisted dying should be a last resort. It is shocking to think Parliament could ever be content with a policy that has such disastrous consequences for so many people. That is no consolation to the people for whom it does not. Those who oppose a change in the law point to the fact that palliative care works for the vast majority of people approaching the end of life.

It will continue to happen because the law refuses people in this position the right to relieve their suffering should that be their wish. It will continue to happen despite the care and compassion of palliative care nurses and doctors. This will continue to happen despite the best efforts of our wonderful hospices.

Do opiates at end of life hasten death