British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

“Doctors at the British Medical Association conference today voted that doctor-assisted suicide should not be made legal in the UK, the Daily Mail reported on 29 June 2006.

“They voted by 65 per cent against 35 per cent in favour of overturning the BMA’s neutral position on assisted suicide, decided at the BMA conference last year.”

The jiggery-pokery needed to get this decision in 2005 had provoked a rebellion. Dr. Phil McCarthy, writing in the Catholic Medical Quarterly of August 2006, reported:

“The National Secular Society claimed that doctors had ‘ditched’ their neutral stance under ‘Christian pressure’, and Dignity in Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) blamed the ‘religious lobby’… These responses seem odd since none of the arguments supporting the motion had been made from any religious text, teaching or tradition. Although the Christian Medical Fellowship was accused of ‘packing’ the meeting, in fact out of the 520 delegates to the ARM only 13 were members of the CMF and none of them spoke in the debate.” However Dr. McCarthy does not deny that a certain world-view influences some people to set a high value on human life.

Dr. Michael Wilks, chairman of the BMA Ethics Committee and a supporter of euthanasia, has now retired.