Professor Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, has called on MPs to not overly complicate assisted dying laws if they are to be introduced. Speaking to a committee of MPs, he said that the best safeguards would be simple ones, saying that they run the risk of causing patients to be caught up in a “bureaucratic thicket.”
Under the proposed assisted dying bill being looked at by a cross-party group of MPs, terminally ill adults in England and Wales with under six months to live would be able to end their lives if agreed on by two doctors and a High Court judge.
But some doctors who also gave evidence to the same committee expressed concerns over whether the safeguards would be enough.
Dr Sarah Cox, of the Association of Palliative Medicine which represents doctors who provide end of life care opposes changing the law. “Me and my colleagues have concerns,” she said. Accurately assessing how long someone has to live, she added, is “incredibly difficult” and identifying if someone had been coerced would not always be possible.
Around 50 witnesses are expected to give evidence this week.
In November, MPs voted in favour of the bill. That was only the first step however. It will need to go through months of scrutiny and additional votes before it becomes law.
Sir Chris told MPs that doctors had been accustomed to assessing the mental capacity of their patients. While determining exactly how long a person has to live was not a “precise science,” he said, in many cases, a doctor could take a “reasonable central view.”
“What we don’t want is a system which is very difficult for them to navigate so they spent their entire last six months,” he added, “if this bill is passed and they choose to take account of it, which is a minority – essentially stuck in a bureaucratic thicket. We do need to keep this simple and my view is the best safeguards are simple safeguards.”
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