Member

While the Bill’s use of a six-month prognosis as reasonably assessed by doctors implies that there is a simple calculation that can supply estimated life expectancy, prognosis is not, as we have previously discussed, an exact science. My concern, which follows on from the discussion that we had last week about the power imbalance between doctors and patients and the deference shown to medical experts by many people sitting in that doctor’s surgery or in the hospital, is that, when a patient hears a doctor say, “Six months”, they may assume that that is an absolute scientific certainty. The fact that there is a vast range of possible trajectories is not something that I think the patient will work out unless they are explicitly told it, which is why I like these amendments.