Over 300 student doctors from across the UK have voiced their opposition to MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, that passed its vote at Third Reading this afternoon. “We write not only as future doctors, but as the next generation of advocates for patient care and safety”, they said in an urgent letter to Westminster MPs.
Hundreds of medical students from universities including Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh wrote to MPs ahead of the vote, urging them to vote against assisted suicide which “risks offering death in the place of care”.
Ms Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for adults given less than six months to live.
Last Monday’s letter from medical students to MPs said: “We oppose a Bill that risks offering death in place of care, that widens health inequalities, that places vulnerable patients in danger, and that reshapes the ethical foundation that our profession is built upon without any clear support.
“As future doctors, we may not yet be the voice of this profession, but we will be. And we are asking to be heard.”
The students also stressed that “being asked to take a life, even under legal framework, poses a deep moral conflict for many clinicians.
“It risks long-term emotional harm, burnout, and attrition from an already overstretched workforce. Medical school does not prepare us for this burden, leaving a future generation of doctors unsupported and exposed.”
Earlier this month, over 1,000 doctors signed a letter to MPs urging them to vote against Ms Leadbeater’s Bill.
The letter expressed the fears of many doctors that they would “feel pressurised when dealing with patient requests for assisted deaths, meaning that doctors may end up having involvement despite it being against their principles, because they want to help their patients”.
This week, Dame Siobhain McDonagh issued a warning that “the assisted dying Bill will rob our stretched NHS of much needed resources and could become the trojan horse that breaks the NHS”.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has also warned that, if assisted suicide is legalised, there would be “resource implications” for the NHS.
“To govern is to choose”, he said last year. “If Parliament chooses to go ahead with assisted dying, it is making a choice that this is an area to prioritise for investment. And we’d have to work through those implications.”
Last year, the “next generation of palliative consultants” wrote to Ms Leadbeater to voice their vehement opposition to her Bill.
“It hasn’t gone unnoticed that assisted dying is financially a cheaper solution than providing holistic care to those who are dying. We palliative medicine registrars strongly oppose this Bill”, their letter stated.
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