The British Medical Association and the General Medical Council have already made it abundantly clear that they want no part in voluntary euthanasia becoming a clinical practice. Now the estimable Royal College of Physicians, the professional body representing over 20,000 physicians that “aims to improve the quality of patient care by continually raising medical standards”, has weighed in with a strongly worded letter to the DPP. “We would go so far as to say”, writes the College’s Registrar, Dr Rodney Burnham, “that any clinician who has been part, in any way, of assisting a suicide death should be subject to prosecution.” Dr Burnham continues: “The trust afforded doctors and nurses in particular gives their views considerable weight with their patients and the public. Clinicians’ duties of care entail active pursuit of alternative solutions to assisted suicide, not its facilitation.”
Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is asking the public if it is ethical to use financial incentives to increase donations of organs, eggs and sperm. Paying for most types of organs and tissue is illegal in the UK. The public consultation will last 12 weeks and the council's findings will be published in autumn 2011.
The Monday Interview: A growing number of medical professionals are supporting the idea of assisted dying. Dr Ann McPherson – who herself has only months to live – tells Jeremy Laurance why
Anti-abortion campaigners are pressing ahead with a controversial amendment to the Government’s new health bill designed to cut the number of pregnancies which are terminated each year in the UK. The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who is proposing the amendment, said yesterday she would not be “bought off” by the promise of a Government consultation on whether or not to offer independent counselling to all women considering an abortion. Instead she said she wanted to change the law to strip abortion charities and doctors of their exclusive responsibility for counselling women seeking to terminate a pregnancy, and hand it to specially trained professionals.
Standards should never come into question, but it's clear to this Government that NHS administrative costs can be streamlined. Estimates suggest that savings of over £180 million could be delivered by 2015 by reducing the number of NHS bodies, including arm's-length bodies. And that is why I set out proposals to change responsibility for regulating fertility treatment and human tissue last week. The UK-wide consultation will consider whether the responsibilities of the regulators - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and Human Tissue Authority (HTA) - should move to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Health Research Authority (HRA).