What are the current provisions on helping terminally ill patients end their lives?
It is unlawful to give any form of assistance to help someone to die. uthanasia – killing someone, especially to relieve suffering – is illegal in Britain. So too is assisted suicide, whereby doctors give patients drugs to kill themselves but do not administer the fatal dose. But there are grey areas and intent is the key. Doctors can accelerate death by withholding a drug – and even give a terminally ill patient large doses of drugs, such as morphine, which may shorten their life. However it is illegal for them to administer a drug specifically to hasten death. To make the matter even more complex, the courts have given doctors the go-ahead to accelerate death in a succession of rulings on individual patients undergoing insufferable pain, but have refused to make more sweeping judgments on the grounds that this is an issue for parliament. Such inconsistencies have led to high profile appeals, such as that by motor neurone disease sufferer Diane Pretty, who unsuccessfully battled in th
