Member

Doctors do not tend to give you that choice—telling you that it is reasonably likely that you will be dead in six months; they are more likely to say, “Let’s see if X, Y or Z treatment or drug will perhaps help you. We need to try that for a little while”. When you do that, you see what the results are. In the impact assessments, we are told that 66% of people in the two jurisdictions referenced were cancer patients. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, is right to say that 40% of those cancer patients did not exercise their right. I said this at Second Reading, so I am not going to repeat it, but potentially one reason why they did not exercise that choice is because that certainty of choice changed. The situation changed as they went along, and perhaps that is why they did not exercise it. So much emphasis on choice perhaps is unwise in this uncertain world.