According to National Review, the British Medical Association (BMA) has joined with the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) in encouraging doctors to help patients die by starvation.

Key Takeaways:

• The British Medical Association (BMA) has joined with the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) in encouraging doctors to help patients die by starvation, but the BMA goes further.

• While the AAHPM guidance assumes patients would be considered 'terminally ill' to request death by starvation, the BMA's guidance says patients do not need to be considered "ill or at the end of life."

• The BMA guidance also states that doctors have a "duty" to help these patients in their quest to starve to death or refer them to a doctor who will.

The Details:

On August 17, the BMA issued a new guidance to provide "clarification about the law and ethics of VSED" — voluntarily stop eating and drinking — to hasten death.

The BMA guidance differs from that of the AAHPM, which was issued in 2023 and follows the understanding that VSED would be undertaken "by patients with a clearly-defined terminal illness associated with a prognosis of months to several years."

Instead, the BMA guidance states that patients don't need to be considered "ill or at the end of life" to request help as they end their own lives by starvation. The guidance from the BMA also states that "doctors have a professional duty" to assist these patients. It says (emphasis added):

We start from a position of understanding that: – patients with capacity are entitled to make decisions about treatment refusals and about their nutrition and hydration, including to voluntarily stop eating and drinking in order to hasten their death; – there is no requirement in the law that a patient needs to be ill or at the end of life to decide to voluntarily stop eating and drinking in order to hasten their death.

Refusing to eat food or drink water is not the same as refusing treatment.

Food and water, along with comfort care like cleaning and pain management, are means of ordinary care for a person while many treatments, such as chemotherapy, are considered extraordinary. Stopping chemotherapy would mean a person would die naturally from cancer. Stopping food would mean the person would die from starvation and dehydration, which is considered torture.

As Wesley J. Smith explained for National Review, the BMA guidance is clear that doctors are expected to help these patients, even when they aren't sick.

The guidance notes, "When an adult patient has made the decision to elect to VSED, the doctor’s initial responsibility is to assess the patient to check that: (1) the patient has the capacity to make the decision; (2) the patient’s decision is not a symptom of a mental disorder; and (3) the patient’s decision is being made free from coercion."

It then states (emphasis added):

If the three criteria above are fulfilled, doctors have a professional duty to provide palliative care and symptom relief to their patient. The doctor’s role is not to consider whether the patient’s decision is rational, reasonable, or sensible. It is not for doctors to decide whether the patient should be permitted to end their life in this way.

This guidance exerts pressure on doctors to participate in a patient's suicide, discouraging them from providing the patient with any means of support to encourage them to stay alive, even when they aren't considered sick. The doctor is required to turn a blind eye to the tragedy even if he or she conscientiously objects to the suicide, by finding a doctor who will assist the patient in their suicide.

"Suicide nihilism is exerting an ever-stronger gravitational pull in the West, with doctors increasingly expected to wield their expertise as so many death order-takers," wrote Smith. "The AAHPM’s and BMA’s blessing of physician participation in VSED deepens that darkness and strengthens the culture of death."

Why It Matters:

Suicide in a medical setting is marketed as a way to escape a life of pain and die with 'peace and dignity.'

Yet, with assisted suicide, patients are paralyzed and can drown, their lungs filling with fluid, without anyone around them realizing it due to their paralysis. Starvation and dehydration through VSED is a horrible way to die; many have suggested that when it comes to 'healthy' people's deaths, it may even be considered a "war crime." But as long as the doctors assist, these medical associations have no problem letting people die this way.

A person's wish to die should not be met with cheers of "empowerment" and "dignity." Every human should be loved enough to receive compassionate palliative care and pain management until their natural death.

Helping them commit suicide sends the discriminatory, cruel, and immoral message that their lives are not worth saving and that they are a burden.