The BMA recommends safeguards for Assisted Suicide

The British Medical Association (BMA) has said that there needs to be more safeguards on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, if passed.

MP Lauren Edwards has brought back the Terminally Ill Adults Bill via a Private Member’s Bill after a similar bill ran out of time in the last session. If passed, this will allow adults with less than 6 months left of life to seek medical ways to end their life. The BMA wants more safeguards to be added to this bill to protect doctors. They said at their Annual Representative Meeting they are “calling for no doctor to be disadvantaged for choosing not to participate, should the law change”. At the meeting they even passed a resolution that “assisted dying is not a medical treatment”. Even though they have remained neutral on whether assisted suicide should or shouldn’t become a law this meeting has shown they are very against the details of this bill.

A big part of what the BMA discussed was making sure junior or resident doctors are not involved in the process of assisted suicide. This was carried in their Annual Representative Meeting saying “that resident doctors are to be specifically excluded from formal involvement in the assisted dying process”. They want doctors to have gone through particular training and recommend that there should be a specialist register for doctors who are willing to participate in assisted suicide.

The BMA is the trade union for doctors and medical students, meaning they work closely with the government, and so will have a lot of influence. There is a chance the government will likely follow a lot of their advice as they are regularly consulted over health policy. However, although Lauren Edwards is open to changes to the legislation, supporters of the bill want to stop peers blocking the bill for a second time. To stop this from happening they would use the Parliament Acts which blocks the House of Lords objecting to an identical bill in a second consecutive session. Thus this bill could become law regardless of the opposition from Peers. This could cause some issues for the BMA in ensuring the changes they want are made.