title: Assisted death: a basic right or a threat to the principal purpose of medicine?
abstract: There is much debate in the UK and abroad around whether the law should be changed to license doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to assist terminally ill patients to commit suicide. Here, Sir Graeme Catto argues that terminally ill mentally competent adults should be able to choose the time and place of their death. Opposing him, Baroness Ilora Finlay argues that both the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill and Lord Falconer's private member's bill in the House of Lords endanger patients' safety and require doctors to assess patients against criteria that cannot be verified.
authors.affiliation: Sir Graeme Catto Dignity in Dying 181 Oxford Street London W1D 2JT. Email president@collegeofmedicine.org.uk; Baroness Finlay of Llandaff House of Lords London SW1A 0PW. Email finlay@parliament.uk.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Catto
authors.forename: I G
authors.initials: IG
authors.lastname: Finlay
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D016743:Mental Competency; D017236:Suicide, Assisted / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D019452:Terminally Ill / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: assisted dying; euthanasia; legislation; physician-assisted suicide