Professor Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, was one of two international keynote speakers at the AMA (WA) End-of-Life Choices and Palliative Care Symposium held earlier this month. Photo: AMA WA.
By Amanda Murthy, with the Australian Medical Association
“Assisted dying has no place in medical practice – doctors should not be the gatekeepers – the judgements required go beyond their professional competence and providing lethal drugs is incompatible with clinical care.”
Those were the words of University of Cardiff Professor of Palliative Medicine and an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords Professor Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff during her presentation at the Australian Medical Association Western Australian End-of-Life Choices and Palliative Care Symposium on 5 May.
Prof Finlay pointed out significant loopholes in assisted dying policies as they exist in various jurisdictions around the world, warning Western Australians on the clinical and societal risks and concerns of saying yes to euthanasia and assisted dying.
Prof Finlay explained she is aware that there seems to be a pressure to legalise assisted dying in societies that are “comfortably off and enjoying increased longevity and, often also, social fragmentation”.
However, she said people fail to realise that “longer life does not always bring extended good health and declining family support can all too easily leave elderly people feeling socially isolated and lonely”.
“In such societies, dying is becoming increasingly medicalised, with every crisis met with a rush to hospital-based emergency care. Families all too often lose touch with the experience of caring for dying relatives and observing the pattern of natural death,” Prof Finlay said.
“When we are unfamiliar with something, we fear it; and what we fear, we seek to control. That word control appears over and again in the assisted dying campaigning lexicon.”
Prof Finlay said both the Westminster and Scottish Parliaments commissioned in-depth studies, with parliamentary committees asking searching questions of experts, before rejecting legalisation of “assisted dying”.
“The committees provided a firm and sound evidence base for rational discussion by legislators,” she added.
Professor Ilora Finlay presents to a packed auditorium at the AMA (WA) End-of-Life Choices and Palliative Care Symposium. Photo: AMA WA.
In 2010, Prof Finlay established Living and Dying Well (LDW), to ensure that any public and parliamentary discussion of “assisted dying” rests on a firm evidential foundation rather than spin and assertion.
According to a 2015 survey of 1000 general practitioners in the UK, only one in seven GPs would consider a request for assisted dying if it were to be legalised. The campaigning for legalisation at the time focused on trying to persuade the medical professional bodies to adopt a position of neutrality, but was unsuccessful.
Prof Finlay said that there should be no medical practitioners involved in assisted dying, as the judgements required go “beyond their professional competence and providing lethal drugs is incompatible with clinical care”.
“The advice I would give WA doctors, during this time when the topic of assisted dying legislation is debated and potentially brought to Parliament is to: “Give legislators the advice you are qualified to give – namely, that seriously ill people are often vulnerable and that the main drivers of pressure for ‘assisted dying’ are personal or social [autonomy, fear of being a burden] rather than medical”.
Ilora Finlay is a Professor of Palliative Medicine at the University of Cardiff and an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords. With an impressive list of positions held, both past and current, Prof Finlay is highly regarded for her clinical policy and service development leadership in palliative care and health services in the UK.
She also served on the Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill and is Co-Chairman of Living and Dying Well, a think-tank that examines the evidence around euthanasia and assisted suicide.