Giving doctors assisted dying drugs risks handing them a ‘licence to kill’

Experts warn that decisions made about lethal drug administration should be kept ‘separate from healthcare’ and made in court

Giving doctors assisted dying drugs would hand them a “licence to kill”, experts have warned.
Palliative care consultants have cautioned against allowing medics to administer fatal drugs to patients under plans to legalise assisted dying.
The doctors, who are all past presidents of the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM), have issued a warning to MPs that the practice “must be separate from healthcare” if legalised. 
They claim giving medics such authority could be a slippery slope, as those in the profession “cannot ethically restrict access to [only] patients that they imagine might die soon”. 
Instead, there would be an obligation to make them available “to everyone they believe would benefit”. 
Ahead of next month’s Commons vote on the proposed law change, Dr Amy Proffitt, Dr David Brooks, and Professor Bill Noble argue that medical expertise is not required for the administration of lethal drugs.
They maintain that the courts are better suited to decide the legality of a “state-facilitated death” and doctors are “not capable of policing this issue”. 
The former AMP presidents claim that separating assisted dying from healthcare would protect doctors from “what lawyers might term the ‘attractive menace’ of a caring doctor with a licence to kill”.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater formally introduced her private members’ Bill to legalise the practice for terminally-ill people on Oct 16.
A free vote on the proposed legislation is scheduled for Nov 29, the first time MPs have debated the issue since 2015.
The doctors’ warning comes as Labour MPs report growing opposition to Ms Leadbeater’s Bill among their ranks.
Rachael Maskell, a former Labour shadow minister who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well, told The Telegraph: “MPs are increasingly questioning the expected approach that Ms Leadbeater will be taking in her Bill, knowing that once passed at second reading, that there will be no guarantee that they will be able to secure the safeguards they are wanting at later stages.”
Ms Maskell has proposed the Government set up a Commission focused on improving palliative care access across the country as an alternative to the Bill.
Her suggestion has gained support from undecided MPs who believe it is the wrong time to change the law, given current pressures on the NHS and social care.
Ms Maskell added: “With MPs changing their mind and leading proponents including Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Shabana Mahmood, Secretary of State for Justice, clear that they will be opposing this Bill, it is time to recognise that another approach is needed to look at end of life management and care.”
Ms Leadbeater has said only terminally-ill people with a limited number of months to live would qualify for an assisted death, with approval from a High Court judge and two doctors required in each case.
She is consulting the British Medical Association (BMA) to understand doctors’ concerns and has proposed a clause allowing conscientious objection.
However, the former APM presidents argue that the medical profession’s ethical principles would contradict Ms Leadbeater’s “limited version of euthanasia” and those who are not facing imminent death could be administered the drugs. 
They said: “When assisted dying is practised by doctors, they will believe that hastening death is doing good, not harm.”
Most assisted dying laws, such as in Oregon and Canada, involve medical professionals directly.
However, certain nations, like Switzerland and Austria, manage assisted dying outside mainstream healthcare, with clinics run by right-to-die associations and volunteer doctors assessing patients and prescribing medication.
By insisting that all decisions be made in court, the three doctors’ calls to separate assisted dying from healthcare go even further than Swiss and Austrian models.
Supporters of legalisation, including Baron Falconer of Thoroton, argue that Parliament alone should set the criteria for assisted dying, preventing expansion by any other means.