The post Act Now: BMA Survey on Assisted Dying Launches Today! appeared first on Friends at the End.
Please consider writing to your doctor to encourage their support.
Today the British Medical Association will launch their survey on assisted dying. The consultation will close on 27 February and is being run by the independent organisation Kantar.
Doctors will be asked whether the BMA should actively support, oppose, or neither actively support nor oppose (take a neutral stance) on a change in the law to permit doctors to prescribe drugs for adults of sound mind, who are either incurably suffering or terminally ill, to end their life.
The survey will also ask what position members think the organisation should take in regard to doctors administering lethal substances (often known as euthanasia).
You can read more about it here
We have drafted a sample letter below, we would be very grateful if you could send this on to any doctors that you know to encourage their support.
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Dear Dr XXX,
The British Medical Association (BMA) is surveying its members on the topic of assisted dying. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m writing to you as your patient/friend to ask you to consider my views when casting your ballot.
I don’t think it’s right that the UK’s prohibitive assisted dying law means that more than one person a week in the UK travels to Switzerland to end their life. This is double what the number was five years ago, and is despite the best efforts of palliative care.
There is a better way, and more countries than ever, including Canada, have now legalised assisted dying and demonstrated the best way to protect patients, their families, and doctors through a robust and open system of safeguards.
I’m asking you to support the choice to be given to the terminally ill and incurably suffering to have a legal, compassionate, and safeguarded assisted death, like nearly 90% of the public agree we should.
Please vote in support of assisted dying in the BMA survey.
Yours sincerely
XXX