BMA on assisted dying

SIR – Calls for the British Medical Association (BMA) to maintain its opposition to assisted dying (report, June 6) ignore the will of the public.

Recent polling revealed that just 7 per cent of people agree with the BMA’s current stance, with a third saying that it is damaging the relationship dying people have with their doctors.

It is a cruel reality that not all suffering at the end of life can be relieved through palliative care. As a result, every two weeks somebody from this country travels abroad to die, and hundreds more end their own lives behind closed doors each year.

The assisted dying debate needs the expertise of doctors, but doctors cannot be allowed to dictate whether or not the law changes. The BMA has a responsibility to adopt a more reasonable, neutral stance. Sir Graeme Catto Former Chairman General Medical Council Aberdeen SIR – Canada is now in the process of introducing assisted suicide laws, in which the individual doctor’s “right to choose” whether to assist suicide is conspicuous by its absence.

Once death is accepted as good medicine, then physicians cannot be exempt from administering it. Ann Farmer Woodford Green, Essex