Please support our declaration of resistance to assisted suicide and euthanasia in the UK and beyond

The ODOC Declaration

As healthcare professionals, we have a legal duty of care for the safety and wellbeing of our patients. 

We affirm, in line with the World Medical Association Declaration on Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide (adopted by the 70th WMA General Assembly, Tbilisi, Georgia, in October 2019), our utmost respect for human life and our opposition to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

No doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional should be forced to participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide, nor should they be obliged to make referral decisions to this end.

Any change in the law undermines the public’s trust in healthcare professionals and would devalue the inherent dignity of frail, elderly, and disabled patients.

The prohibition of killing is the only safeguard that will protect our patients.

We will not take our patients’ lives, even if they ask us and the law allows.

Instead, we have a duty of care towards those in pain and in distress, to help them to live until they die.

Picture of Dr Gillian Wright

Dr Gillian Wright

Director, Our Duty of Care, Glasgow

Picture of Dr David Randall

Dr David Randall

Consultant Nephrologist, London

Add Your Name to the ODOC DECLARATION

What are your colleagues saying?

Hover over a quote to pause the slide

“Although I have cared for thousands of patients with cancer, I have not had any requests for euthanasia. With the help of expert palliative care, symptoms can be well controlled towards the end of life. I am also mindful of the problems associated with euthanasia and assisted suicide, not least that doctors are far from perfect at predicting survival. Only today, I came across a patient alive and well years after having been told that he had just months to live. I don’t want to minimise the distress that some of us will feel as we approach death, but I believe that the priority should be to make high quality palliative care freely available to all who need it”
Professor Chris Parker
Professor Chris ParkerConsultant Oncologist, London
“A person dies every minute in the UK. The overwhelming majority die peacefully, including those with terminal cancer and progressive neurological diseases. Seeking to change the current law, which serves the majority well, for the essentially selfish motives of a minority would require healthcare professionals to abandon their vocational calling to do no harm. Whilst we all share a terminal prognosis, the desire to live prevails even in the face of disability and disease, unless we have untreated depressive illness. To pretend that killing is better than relieving suffering and protecting the vulnerable is irrational. Our common goal is a health service that cares and protects. Palliative care delivers this, assisted suicide and euthanasia do not.”
Prof Anthony BellEmeritus Professor of Neurosurgery, London
"My interactions with vulnerable older people make me concerned about a change in the law on assisted suicide. Even if on paper the safeguards seem secure and straightforward, life, death and autonomy are much more nuanced. There would be an inevitable change in attitude towards those nearing the end of life. Terminally ill people who would otherwise not have considered suicide suddenly have to make a choice, at a time when a change in circumstances likely intensifies any feeling that they are a burden to others. Healthcare professionals who in any other circumstance would have attempted to help someone with suicidal thoughts would be obliged to validate this state of mind, even if that were only by onward referral."
Dr Phillipa Knaggs
Dr Phillipa KnaggsGP, West Yorkshire
“If anyone were in any doubt about the risk of covert or silent coercion of vulnerable adults, they should look at the placement of older people, including those with dementia, in care homes. Many older people give up their homes to live in institutions because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that others wish them to do so. Some regret the decision; and those with dementia (where the assessment of capacity can be difficult) are often hardly involved in such decisions.1 Lonely, sick and disabled older people may well succumb (especially where the resources to care are scarce) to the suggestion that they should accept physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, but this may well not reflect their true choices.”
Prof Julian Hughes Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Bristol
“Not Dead Yet highlights the voice of disabled people who want support to live with dignity and respect and are terrified of the campaign to change the law on Assisted Suicide"
Zeynab Al-Khero
Zeynab Al-Khero Researcher, Not Dead Yet
"Patient autonomy is rightly revered. Doctors should value and respect their patients. But the principle from which autonomy is derived– the respect for another human being– is that which also underpins the prohibition of the taking of life. What do we do when taking life clashes with patient autonomy? It seems to me, for a community to flourish we must, at times, choose to give up our individual autonomy for the sake of us all. Some individual suffering is terrible as well as prolonged and we question if there is any other way. But the value and worth of all human life must restrain us, as a society, from taking life. Responsibility to and for others is the very stuff of friendship and family, of the doctor-patient relationship, of society itself."
Dr Gillian Wright
Dr Gillian WrightGlasgow
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What are your colleagues saying?

Dr Gillian Wright

Glasgow

"Patient autonomy is rightly revered. Doctors should value and respect their patients. But the principle from which autonomy is derived– the respect for another human being– is that which also underpins the prohibition of the taking of life. What do we do when taking life clashes with patient autonomy? It seems to me, for a community to flourish we must, at times, choose to give up our individual autonomy for the sake of us all. Some individual suffering is terrible as well as prolonged and we question if there is any other way. But the value and worth of all human life must restrain us, as a society, from taking life. Responsibility to and for others is the very stuff of friendship and family, of the doctor-patient relationship, of society itself."

Zeynab Al-Khero

Researcher, Not Dead Yet

“Not Dead Yet highlights the voice of disabled people who want support to live with dignity and respect and are terrified of the campaign to change the law on Assisted Suicide"

Prof Julian Hughes

Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Bristol

“If anyone were in any doubt about the risk of covert or silent coercion of vulnerable adults, they should look at the placement of older people, including those with dementia, in care homes. Many older people give up their homes to live in institutions because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that others wish them to do so. Some regret the decision; and those with dementia (where the assessment of capacity can be difficult) are often hardly involved in such decisions.1 Lonely, sick and disabled older people may well succumb (especially where the resources to care are scarce) to the suggestion that they should accept physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, but this may well not reflect their true choices.”

Dr Phillipa Knaggs

GP, West Yorkshire

"My interactions with vulnerable older people make me concerned about a change in the law on assisted suicide. Even if on paper the safeguards seem secure and straightforward, life, death and autonomy are much more nuanced. There would be an inevitable change in attitude towards those nearing the end of life. Terminally ill people who would otherwise not have considered suicide suddenly have to make a choice, at a time when a change in circumstances likely intensifies any feeling that they are a burden to others. Healthcare professionals who in any other circumstance would have attempted to help someone with suicidal thoughts would be obliged to validate this state of mind, even if that were only by onward referral."

Prof Anthony Bell

Emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery, London

“A person dies every minute in the UK. The overwhelming majority die peacefully, including those with terminal cancer and progressive neurological diseases. Seeking to change the current law, which serves the majority well, for the essentially selfish motives of a minority would require healthcare professionals to abandon their vocational calling to do no harm. Whilst we all share a terminal prognosis, the desire to live prevails even in the face of disability and disease, unless we have untreated depressive illness. To pretend that killing is better than relieving suffering and protecting the vulnerable is irrational. Our common goal is a health service that cares and protects. Palliative care delivers this, assisted suicide and euthanasia do not.”

Professor Chris Parker

Consultant Oncologist, London

“Although I have cared for thousands of patients with cancer, I have not had any requests for euthanasia. With the help of expert palliative care, symptoms can be well controlled towards the end of life. I am also mindful of the problems associated with euthanasia and assisted suicide, not least that doctors are far from perfect at predicting survival. Only today, I came across a patient alive and well years after having been told that he had just months to live. I don’t want to minimise the distress that some of us will feel as we approach death, but I believe that the priority should be to make high quality palliative care freely available to all who need it”

Healthcare professionals opposing assisted suicide & euthanasia

Our duty of care is a group of UK healthcare workers who oppose the intentional killing of patients by assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The campaign is administered by David Randall, a consultant nephrologist working in London, and Gillian Wright, a former palliative care doctor based in Scotland.

It is supported by a wide range of healthcare professionals, and has campaigned during the membership polls run by the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners and British Medical Association to maintain medical opposition to assisted suicide. We are a campaign that is financed and administered by the Care Not Killing Alliance.

Media Enquiries

Journalists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – please contact Alistair Thompson on 07970 162225 –  [email protected]

Journalists in Scotland – please contact Tom Hamilton Communications on  07836 603977

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