Image – Unsplash: Judy Beth Morris
The Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath) has come out against assisted suicide ahead of a crucial vote on MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
Representing medical examiners, RCPath said it could not support the Bill as its members would be included in the assisted suicide process, which would be “potentially taking medical examiners away from their current important role”.
Leadbeater’s Bill forgoes the need for a coroner to be notified about an assisted suicide, meaning that medical examiners would be forced to investigate each case.
Dr Suzy Lishman, the senior advisor on medical examiners for RCPath, said that “the college’s concerns relate only to the involvement of medical examiners after an assisted death has taken place”.
“As part of their scrutiny, medical examiners would need to review the process leading up to the decision to authorise an assisted death and the circumstances of the assisted death, which they are not qualified to do”, Dr Lishman continued.
“Notification to the coroner following an assisted death would ensure independent judicial review, which is particularly important given the concerns raised by many individuals, organisations and medical royal colleges about the lack of adequate safeguards in the Bill for vulnerable people.
“Lawyers, not doctors, are the most appropriate professionals to review these deaths. The medical examiner system was implemented to detect problems with medical care, not to identify discrepancies or malintent in the legal process required for assisted deaths.”
Leadbeater’s Bill seeks to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given less than six months to life. It will be debated by MPs tomorrow (13 June), ahead of a crucial vote on 20 June. SPUC is urging all concerned citizens to lobby their MPs to warn against the mortal threat posed by assisted suicide.
Earlier this year, Judge Thomas Teague KC, a former chief coroner for England and Wales, warned that Leadbeater’s Bill could lead to potential murders not being investigated, breaching the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that requires all “unnatural deaths” to be investigated.
“The coroner’s statutory duty to investigate all unnatural deaths, irrespective of whether any misfeasance is alleged, provides a powerful deterrent against wrongdoing”, Judge Teague said.
“By removing any realistic prospect of an effective inquest, such a dispensation would magnify, rather than diminish, the obvious risks of deception and undue influence and would expose the bill to legal challenge.”
This month, over 1,000 doctors signed a letter to MPs urging them to vote against Kim Leadbeater’s Bill. “This bill will widen inequalities, it provides inadequate safeguards and, in our collective view, is simply not safe”, the letter stated.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists also recently withdrew its support for the Leadbeater Bill. Its concerns included the uncertain role and burden that might fall on psychiatrists in the provision of assisted suicide.
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