A recent (2020) survey of its members by the British Medical Association indicated that opinion is divided. Slightly more respondents said they would support a change in the law to allow assisted suicide, though when asked whether they personally would be willing to participate in such practices a majority said No. When asked the same questions in regard to administered euthanasia, a majority opposed a change in the law and a substantial majority was opposed to personal participation. The survey also indicated opposition to 'assisted dying' to be strongest among doctors working in specialisations (eg palliative care, geriatric medicine, GPs) with most day-to-day contact with terminally ill patients and weakest among others (eg obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthetics) with least contact.

Some are opposed because they consider that licensing doctors to hasten the deaths of seriously-ill patients is not a proper part of medical care and is inconsistent with the 'do no harm' principle that underpins clinical practice.  Others - including most of those with day-to-day experience of caring for terminally ill people – are opposed because they know at first hand that seriously ill patients are often vulnerable.

Yes, there would be. But, with the majority of doctors refusing to participate in such practices, those providing assistance with suicide would in many cases be doctors who had only recently been introduced to the patient and who would have no first-hand knowledge of the patient over time and of his or her susceptibilities - for example, to depression or despair or mood swings. Nor would they have any first-hand knowledge of the patient's personal or family situation and they would not therefore be well-placed to judge whether there might be any background pressure or other issues which could be influencing the request.

The law applies to doctors as it does to everyone else.  However, the prosecution policy on assisted suicide published by the Crown Prosecution Service in February 2010 makes clear that assistance with suicide will be regarded as aggravated if provided by a medical practitioner, a nurse or another person under whose care the deceased person had been.

The prosecution policy does not encourage any kind of assistance with suicide - it makes clear that any act of encouraging or assisting suicide is a criminal offence. The listing of professional medical involvement as an aggravating consideration reflects the need to protect people who are under the care of others; and it also draws a distinction between one-off acts which are unlikely to be repeated and others which might be seen as a professional service.

It depends at what range the prognosis is being offered. In 2004 the Royal College of General Practitioners told a parliamentary select committee that “it is possible to make reasonably accurate prognoses of death within minutes, hours or a few days” but that “when this stretches to months, then the scope for error can extend into years”. A doctor from the Royal College of Physicians told the committee that "prognosticating may be better when somebody is within the last two or three weeks of their life" but that "when they are six or eight months away from it, it is actually pretty desperately hopeless".

Any doctor who knowingly hastened a patient's death would be committing a criminal offence. There are some anonymous surveys of doctors which suggest that there might be a tiny margin of deaths where doctors may have acted against the law.  Independent research in this field has concluded that the incidence of illegal action of this nature by doctors in Britain is "rare or non-existent”. The self-styled ‘commission on assisted dying’ was told by Professor Clive Seale that "there is a kind of joint quality to decision-making in UK medical practice that is very marked compared to other countries" and that "with that situation decisions don't go unscrutinised".

The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is a set of guidelines to guide doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in providing good care for dying patients in the last hours or days of life. It was developed by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute in Liverpool as a means of transferring the high standards of end-of-life care found in hospices into hospitals and community health care. It does not prescribe treatments or care regimes but prompts doctors and nurses caring for patients who are considered to be close to dying to consider a range of options for maximising comfort and dignity. It is designed to support, but not to replace, clinical judgement.

The allegations which have appeared in some parts of the media have been investigated by an inquiry established by the Government. This concluded that "when the LCP is operated by well-trained, well-resourced and sensitive clinical teams, it works well" but that there have been instances where patients cared for on the LCP were treated with less respect that they deserved and that the LCP may sometimes have used as a tick-box exercise rather than as a guide to good care at the end of life.  The inquiry made a number of recommendations to correction these and other deficiencies.

Doctors aren't standing in the way of legalisation.  Parliament could license assisted suicide over the heads of doctors if it thought that was appropriate. But it hasn't thought that. If doctors are to be asked to assess patients for assisted suicide and to supply lethal drugs to them, it's only right to listen to what they have to say about it. There is an old saying: 'no decision about me without me'.  

The Medical Colleges have consulted their members at regular intervals and have either maintained or adjusted their positions accordingly. Some have maintained their opposition to a change in the law, while others have chosen a neutral stance. None has supported a change in the law.

The law acts as a deterrent. With the serious penalties it holds in reserve to deal with malicious or manipulative assistance, it makes anyone minded to assist a suicide think very carefully indeed before proceeding. The effect of this is both to minimise the number of cases and to ensure that the few cases that do occur are generally those where assistance with suicide has been given reluctantly, after much soul-searching, in response to persistent requests and from genuinely compassionate motives. Such cases are unlikely to call for prosecution and they are not usually prosecuted.