Alert in the United Kingdom: hospital patients could choose suicide assisted due to lack of palliative care

The executive director of Hospice UKToby Porter, warned that patients with terminal diseases could feel pushed to assisted suicide, if this practice receives more public financing than hospices, which currently depend, in large part, on charity to function in the United Kingdom.

“If palliative care does not receive investment and all the attention is concentrated in the assisted suicide, that will mean that the 1% needs will be prioritized above the needs of 99%,” Porter declaredwhose organization represents more than 200 hospices in the United Kingdom.

His statements arise after the third reading of the bill for adults with terminal diseases (end of life) – approved by the Chamber of the Commons in November 2024 -, which seeks to legalize assisted suicide.

Labor leader Keir Starmer has assured that he would find the resources to finance an assisted suicide service, but has not committed to increasing funds for palliative care, something that Porter considers a “betrayal of the population”.

“You cannot ignore the moral question about the assumption, which we all do until we are told otherwise, that an assisted death service will be fully funded by the State, while the palliative care provided by hospices only receive 30% public funds and 70% of charitable contributions,” Porter said.

Porter, who testified to the bill of the bill in January, warned about the risk that “all our energy is concentrated in how this 1% will die and ensure that they have the option they want, but we do not do anything about all the options that should exist within the palliative care for the remaining 99%.”

The government itself has estimated that less than 1% of terminal patients would opt for assisted death. Even so, Porter argues that even the perception that there will be no access to the relief of pain or support for families, could push vulnerable people to choose assisted death.

“A result in which someone chose an assisted death for real or imaginary fear of not receiving palliative care, or because their family would not have support during their illness, would clearly be a moral and practical misfortune for any country,” he said.

The British Parliament was accused earlier of this year of granting a “blank check” to this bill, in the midst of protests of legislators concerned with costs and the impact on the palliative care sector, already financed below their real needs.

“We have to ask ourselves: where will that money come from? Presumably, can only come from existing resources, and one assumes that from palliative care,” added Hayes.

For its part, Catherine Robinson, spokesman for the provida organization Right To Life UK, He warned That the apparent provision of the Government to finance a state assisted suicide service, without a parallel commitment to fully finance palliative care, “runs the risk of creating a perverse impulse towards assisted suicide, since a service could be easily available while the other is not.”

“For vulnerable people at the end of their lives, it is especially worrying that assisted suicide can end up becoming the default option, simply because it is available and better financed than palliative care,” Robinson concluded.