Doctors who back assisted suicide 40 per cent more likely to withdraw treatment

Times Online
October 26, 2009
David Rose, Health Correspondent

Doctors who support the legalisation of assisted suicide are more likely to withdraw or withhold treatment from dying patients, a study has found.

Actively helping someone to die remains illegal in Britain but more than a third of GPs and hospital doctors report making decisions which they expected would accelerate the death of a terminally-ill patient.

A significant minority — 7 per cent — said that they had taken steps such as withdrawing medications, foods or fluid, with the intention of hastening a patient’s death.

But doctors who actively support a change in the law to allow assisted suicide are up to 40 per cent more likely to take such actions, a new analysis has found. the rest