Letter to the Editor

SIR - I must take issue with your rather negative view, in your editorial in last month’s issue, of pharmacists’ attitudes to participating in the process of assisted dying if it were to be legalised. To help a terminally ill person who is suffering unbearably despite the best efforts of palliative care, who is mentally competent and who of their own volition wants to put an end to their misery, would be to my way of thinking – and I would imagine to the large majority of pharmacists – an act of compassion.

The safeguards that would be built into the process would protect pharmacists in the same way that protocols for the supply of EHC, with which you compare supplying medication for assisted dying, currently do. And, as with EHC, no pharmacist would be forced to participate if they had objections on religious or moral grounds.

I think that, as with all issues of this type, it will be just a vociferous minority of opposed pharmacists who will make themselves and their point of view heard while those in favour, ie, the majority, will largely remain silent. And as for your point about customers boycotting pharmacies that participate in assisted dying, how many customers currently boycott pharmacies that supply EHC?

Alan Nathan
Member of Dignity in Dying and Health Professionals for assisted dying