BMA opposes any change to law on assisted suicide

Doctors at the annual representative meeting of the BMA last week debated whether the 1961 Suicide Act should be amended. The high profile cases of Diane Pretty, who wanted her husband to be allowed to help her to die without fear of prosecution, and of Miss B, who successfully asked for treatment to be withdrawn so that she could die, were the background to the debate.

Despite speeches in support of changing the law, the meeting decided, by 96 votes to 82, that it was not “necessary and desirable” to amend the act “to take account of mentally competent individuals who wish to take their own lives but are physically incapable of so doing.”

The motion was not about euthanasia or …