Royal College of Physicians warns that proposed guidance could ‘open door’ to doctor-assisted suicide

January 21, 2010 by Infowars Ireland

telegraph.co.uk

Proposed guidance on assisted suicide risks creating an “open door” for doctors to end patients’ lives, the Royal College of Physicians has warned.

In a strongly-worded submission to the Crown Prosecution Service, England’s oldest medical institution says that any clinician suspected of helping someone die should be investigated by police.

It also warns that the draft clarification of the Suicide Act will mean doctors are “coerced” into speculating on how long a patient has to live, so that their loved ones are able to escape prosecution for assisted suicide by claiming they were terminally ill.

The letter is the latest from leading professionals to warn of the dangers posed by the new guidance on assisted suicide, which the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, was ordered to publish by the Law Lords following the right-to-die case won by Debbie Purdy last summer. The MS sufferer wanted to know if her husband would face up to 14 years’ jail should he take her to Dignitas, the “suicide clinic” in Switzerland, and successfully argued that the current law against aiding suicide was unclear.

Draft clarification released in September included a checklist of factors that would make prosecution less likely, such as the fact that the victim was in very poor health or had tried to take their life before, or had been helped to die by a spouse or family member.

However the RCP, which has represented England’s medical practitioners since the 16th century, has called for “substantial amendment” if the final guidelines are to be “safe for the public”.

It warns that the stipulation that those who assist suicide are more likely to face prosecution if they work in a “care/nursing home environment” does not specifically include doctors.

Its Registrar, Rodney Burnham, wrote: “We believe that our duty of care is to work with patients to mitigate and overcome their clinical difficulties and suffering. It is clear to us that this does not include being, in any way, part of their suicide.

“We would go so far as to say that any evidence that any clinician who has been part, in any way, of assisting a suicide death should be subject to prosecution.

“Assisting suicide has been clearly and expressly outside our duty of care since Hippocrates and must remain so for the integrity of these professions and the public good.”

The college says the DPP’s claim that people would be less likely to be investigated if they provided help “as a consequence of his or her usual lawful employment” is open to misinterpretation.

Its submission, sent in December and seen by The Daily Telegraph, states: “As it stands, it could imply that assistance with suicide given by a physician, surgeon, nurse or other health care professional in the course of his or her normal employment will be regarded more leniently than assistance with suicide given by others.

“This could well be an open door to physician-assisted suicide, to which the College is firmly opposed.” Read more…