On Wednesday 30 June The Royal Society of Medicine hosted a debate on the hot topic of assisted suicide. Speakers on both sides of the debate were invited to participate and the evening culminated in a vote on the motion “This house believes that assisted suicide should be legal in the UK”, which was defeated by a wide margin.

Lord Joffe, sponsor of the 2006 “Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill” in the House of Lords, spoke first. He presented the proposed legalisation as modest in scope, intended only to relieve the suffering of a very small number of people who would make their own free choice. He said he’d changed his mind about ‘voluntary euthanasia’ (direct killing of someone at their request) and now opposed it.

Next Lord Carlile gave a powerful speech, emphasising the impracticality and shifting improvisations of proposals in the House of Lords to legalise assisted euthanasia. He made it clear that he was not religious but that preserving life was an ethical value for him. He also argued that many people would feel that they were morally obliged to ask for euthanasia in order to preserve their savings for their children.

The third speaker, Raymond Tallis, the philosopher and retired doctor, emphasised that pain management did not work for anyone and talked a lot about Oregon as a place where assisted suicide worked.

Next Baroness O’Loan spoke movingly of her own experiences of the good and the bad care of the dying, and also drew attention to the opposition to legalised assisted suicide by disabled groups, and, contra Tallis, the poor palliative care in Oregon and Holland.

Contributions from the floor were of high quality. A representative of disabled trade unionists spoke about that sense of threat and recounted the experiences of a friend who had visited a hospice in Holland: he found it unimpressive and poorly funded, and he had to get through a picket of pro-euthanasia supporters who apparently thought of hospices as a threat.

David D’Avray, the ProLife Alliance’s representative present, pointed out that there was no argument for the motion which did not logically entail assisting the chronically and clinically depressed to commit suicide, though it might take time for the logical penny to drop.

The final vote was very definitely against the motion and is yet another indication that the medical community and the country at large do not want to have anything to do with assisted suicide.