Assisted dying: Association for Palliative Medicine responds

As the world’s largest association representing doctors in palliative medicine, we (current officers of the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM)) are saddened and dismayed by the recent blog and opinion article in The BMJ .12 Anonymous pieces are the most difficult to respond to, as often the motives for the original piece are not obvious. The Royal College of Physicians’ recent independent and anonymous poll about assisted dying confirms that, in line with the APM survey of 2014, 4% of palliative care physicians are in favour, 16% are undecided, and 80% remain opposed to medicine’s involvement in ending patients’ lives. …