Why we must fight this misguided drive to force through assisted suicide
by Dominic Lawson, Daily Mail:
[…] The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) is to poll its 35,000 members, on whether, in its words, ‘they would help a terminally ill patient to die and whether the law should be changed to allow assisted dying’.
The current official position of the RCP is one of opposition to a change in the law: in 2014 it polled its members, asking them ‘do you support a change in the law to permit assisted suicide by the terminally ill with the assistance of doctors?’ The response was that 57.5 per cent said ‘no’, 32.3 per cent said ‘yes’ and 10.2 per cent said ‘yes, but not by doctors’.
That seemed clear enough. Yet not only is the RCP now re-opening the issue: it has declared that unless 60 per cent of its members say they are opposed, it will switch its official position from ‘against’ to ‘neutral’. It is not unusual for a supermajority to be required for a fundamental change in a constitution: it is unprecedented for one to be required to keep things as they are.
I became aware of this having received a letter from Dr David Randall, a registrar in renal medicine at the Royal London Hospital. He expressed his concern forcibly: ‘The membership seems to be being offered a fait accompli by members of Dignity in Dying, who have achieved positions of influence on the RCP council, and it has been designed (using a totally unjustified supermajority requirement) to ensure that the College drops its long-standing opposition to assisted suicide ahead of future parliamentary attempts at legislation.’
A registrar in renal medicine at the Royal London Hospital (…) urged me to ‘shed daylight on an apparent manipulation of procedure by pro-euthanasia activists’
Dr Randall urged me — as a newspaper columnist — to ‘shed daylight on an apparent manipulation of procedure by pro-euthanasia activists’.
Happy to oblige.
See also: Can we be trusted with euthanasia? By Ian Birrell, UnHerd
Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far? By By Christopher de Bellaigue, Guardian
Petition: Stop the Royal College of Physicians being hijacked by assisted suicide campaigners, from CitizenGo
Doctors induce twenty-five percent of Dutch deaths, by Wesley Smith, National Review
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