Not in my name

A recent report by a Commission on Assisted Suicide funded by euthanasia advocates, Terry Pratchett and Bernard Lewis, ushered in by euthanasia supporter and Labour peer, Charles Falconer, and sponsored by Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society), has found, predictably, that a legal framework should be investigated that would allow medical complicity in suicide. The fact that the 11-strong commission was made up of nine well-known proponents of euthanasia, led, inexorably, to an early-stage boycott of the inquiry by over 40 organisations, including the British Medical Association.

Rejecting current law, the commission demands that Parliament “investigate the circumstances under which it should be possible for people to be assisted to die...”. The programme it proposes would offer medically assisted suicide to patients satisfying certain “eligibility criteria”. Parliament has repeatedly rejected attempts to legalise euthanasia and its variants in 2009, 2004, 2003, in the 1990s and, interestingly, in 1936 at the same time Aktion T4 (Nazi Germany’s euthanasia programme) was being implemented. With a steadily ageing