Polices and guidance on euthanasia and assisted suicide

In February 2020, the media reported the decision by 59-year-old Michael Askham to end his own life by deliberately starving himself to death to raise awareness of, and to make an appeal to change, UK assisted dying laws. The patient, who has motor neurone disease, is a former nurse (Lintern, 2020).

Euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person's life to relieve suffering; assisted suicide is the act of deliberately assisting or encouraging another person to take their own life.

An example of euthanasia might be a doctor deliberately giving a patient, who had a terminal illness and was approaching the end of life, medication that they did not require such as an overdose of sedatives or muscle relaxant, with the sole aim of ending their life.

The Oxford Dictionary defines assisted suicide as a person killing himself/herself with the help of someone such as a doctor, especially because he/she is suffering from a disease that has no cure. For example, if a relative of such a patient were to acquire a fatal dose of an opioid drug, knowing that the patient in question would use the drug to end their own life, this would be considered as assisting suicide.