Assisted dying

sir – Sir Terence English (Letters, September 17) writes that assistance in suicide would be granted to terminally ill patients “if their suffering became intolerable during the last few days or weeks of life, despite all that palliative care could provide”.

But the Assisted Dying Bill does not require patients to have tried palliative treatment. It does not even require that patients be suffering at all. Professor John Keown

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University Washington DC, United States