The Assisted Dying Bill
is really promising for the overall approval of the Assisted Dying Bill, as the vast majority of candidates eligible for the application process will be included in this age bracket. In comparison, 63% of people either agreed or strongly agreed that those with non-terminal but physical degenerative diseases should also have the opportunity to be given lethal medication (Nuffield Bioethics, p. 31). 63% is still a noticeable majority of participants, and only 8 percentage points lower than approval for assisted dying for the terminally ill – demonstrating that the public would generally be in favour of the Bill being extended to those with non-terminal physical diseases. Having said that, in the case of assisted dying for mental health related issues, only 38% of participants agreed that they should be given prescriptions – a very noticeable 25% drop off from physical degenerative illnesses (Nuffield Bioethics, p. 32). In other words, one in four would concur that voluntary euthanasia could be advised to a candidate with a physical non- terminal illness but object to those with mental illnesses being included. So, it is clear that there is a large discrepancy between public approval for assisted dying prescriptions for those with physical and mental non-terminal diseases. But does this also hold true for medical professionals? The importance of medical opinion in the assisted dying debate cannot be overstated. If the law passes, doctors and nurses will be the ones who will have to make the decision on whether a patient is eligible for the assisted dying process (Parliament, 2024, pp 7-9). It is imperative that they are not against the Bill going through, as otherwise there would be ethical issues around forcing practitioners into prescribing lethal injections to which they do not consent. That being said, for as long as the debate has existed around voluntary euthanasia, medical practitioners have generally been opposed to the concept. This is because it is seen by many as a violation of their Hippocratic Oath (Infante, 2021) – a promise made by doctors to always help patients and avoid causing them harm. It is an understandable perspective. Physicians have been trained for years to cure patients of their illnesses, and ending their lives seems like a step in the completely opposite direction. And while lethal medications for terminal patients can be justified on the grounds that they do not have much longer to live regardless, the same line of reasoning cannot be used for non-terminal cases. Nevertheless, times are changing. The BMA, which is composed of nearly 200,000 medical practitioners and is currently the largest pressure-group for doctors in the country (Smapply, 2025), made history on 14 th September 2021, voting in favour of a motion changing their public stance on PAD from opposition to neutral. Furthermore, in their official document on assisted dying, they do not explicitly state that the practice should be kept to those who are terminally-ill, instead writing that those who are eligible should ‘have either a terminal illness or serious physical illness causing intolerable suffering that cannot be relieved’ (BMA, 2021). The BMA’s criteria do not, however, make any room for those with mental health disorders. Here they adopt a similar stance to the public, disagreeing that those with mental illnesses should be eligible for voluntary euthanasia. During my interview with Sridhar Venkatapuram, a member of the BMA ethics committee, he kindly gave me more clarification on the reasoning behind the BMA’s change in perspective. He explained that medicine has evolved beyond the basic interpretation of the Hippocratic oath – paraphrasing his words, the purpose of medicine is to alleviate suffering and provide help, not to simply ‘cure’ a patient. He also agreed with the BMA’s rejection of assisted dying for those with severe mental disorders, explaining that
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