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Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill: Select Committee Report

My Lords, I became a supporter of assisted dying for the terminally ill after 30 years of medical practice and eight years as international development spokesman for my party. I may not have as much experience of the dying as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who spoke very eloquently earlier, but I have to say to her that I know the various clauses in the Hippocratic Oath and I notice that many of them have now been dropped. Medicine changes; for instance, Hippocrates urged us not to cut for stone. If we were not doing that nowadays, many people would suffer agonies from renal stones and gallstones. Medicine changes and we must change with it and look at things differently as different treatments become available.