In October 2018 it is reported that the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) broke ranks with the American Medical Association (AMA) by adopting a position of “engaged neutrality” on assisted suicide and euthanasia. At its Congress of Delegates in New Orleans the AAFP, the second largest component society of the AMA with more than [...]
Recently the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), in a widely reported statement, called for doctors to start talking about death earlier. It followed from a report, “Talking about Dying”, which found only 4% of patients talk to their doctors about dying or benefit from advanced care planning. “Too many patients are being admitted to hospital [...]
In October 2018, the National Secular Society and the Secular Medical Forum held a joint conference on Healthcare and Secularism. The final two talks concerned assisted dying and the right to die. Both talks were excellent. Videos of the talks are available on YouTube and are embedded here with some description and comments. 1. Dr. [...]
MDMD are delighted to learn that the Scottish parliament has removed any time limit from its definition of "terminally ill" in their Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. The story was reported by the BBC and the Guardian. The Guardian article states "There were a number of significant last-minute amendments to the legislation, including the removal [...]
The BBC Ideas website has recently added a short video titled 'Should we be able to choose our own death?'. Although MDMD had no part in its making, it demonstrates one really good way of achieving our goal. It is a personal opinion piece by philosopher Nigel Warburton. He starts by asking us to imagine [...]
The Sunday Times today published an article on the end of life plans of MDMD founder Dr Michael Irwin. (The organisation he founded was the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide, SOARS, which democratically chose to change its name to My Death, My Decision in 2016.) In the article Dr Irwin explains how, when he [...]
Canada legalised a limited form of assisted dying in 2016. A long article in the New York Times gives a detailed and inspiring account of John Shields who died by lethal injection in British Columbia. He suffered from an incurable condition, amyloidosis, which gave him increasing pain that he no longer wished to endure. The [...]
The Daily Mail 5/9/16 reports on a paper published in a medical journal which calls for allowing euthanasia to enable organ donation in the case 'where it has been argued through the courts that a patient in a permanent vegetative state is going to have clinically assisted nutrition and hydration withdrawn, with the inevitable consequence [...]
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) writes a moving personal story of his mother who suffers from dementia, arguing the case for assisted suicide for early stage dementia patients - as he and his mother did 10 years before. Colin Brewer, former psychiatrist and current associate coordinator of MDMD, follows this [...]