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Global General

UK's Brown urges no change in assisted suicide law

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-24 11:12

LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned against the legalisation of assisted suicide on Wednesday, as the legal and moral debate over the right of people to help their friends or relatives to die gains ground.

In a column in The Daily Telegraph's Wednesday edition Brown said the current law was in place to protect the sick and old in society, and a change would fundamentally alter the way society considers mortality.

"The law -- together with the values and standards of our caring professions -- supports good care including palliative care for the most difficult conditions and also protects the most vulnerable in our society," he wrote.

With the proportion old people growing rapidly in the United States, Japan and much of Europe, the debate over death is expected to rise up the political agenda.

Brown's comments come ahead of the publication of guidelines by Britain's chief public prosecutor Keir Starmer on Thursday, that are expected to clarify whether to bring charges against people who assist their loved ones in ending their lives.

The prime minister said he hoped the guidelines might clarify the complex circumstances surrounding the issue and weaken the case for changing the law.

"Following the clarification and because of some important developments in care over recent decades, the case for a change in law is now weaker," he wrote.

Despite repeated challenges in the courts, assisted suicide is illegal in Britain and carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Dozens of terminally ill Britons have gone to die in a Swiss clinic, where assisted suicide is legal and family or friends who help them to die will not be prosecuted.

Brown warned a change in the law would put the elderly under pressure to end their lives and would damage the trust placed in the medical profession.

"The risk of pressures -- however subtle -- on the frail and the vulnerable, who may feel their existences as burdensome to others, cannot every be entirely excluded."

"(T)he inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions -- if they were in the position to end life -- would be to lose something very precious," Brown wrote.