Bad deaths scar families for ever

For patients like Maddie Cowey, who was 18 when she was diagnosed with incurable cancer, the stakes of the debate couldn’t be higher. Photographer Alicia Canter spent four months capturing people facing the end, and bereaved relatives desperate to see the law change – even if it will be too late for some.

Sapiens are sentient, relational beings.

We feel, we imagine, we fear, we hope, and we deeply care how we are seen when our bodies fail us. Loss of physical function may be inevitable; loss of agency and the forced endurance of meaningless suffering need not be. It is an unbelievably self-serving view that terminal humans should be thankful for suffering up to the point where their organs are failing “naturally” to create an opportunity to teach humanity lessons in grief, humility, and gratitude.

Debate rages around the right to choose to die.

The practice of assisted dying remains one of the medical sector’s most explosive and enduring ethical dilemmas

South African doctors share their personal experiences in Canada of assisted dying, a way out of suffering that is now legal in about dozen countries.

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26 January 2025

Claire Keeton Senior features writer, Sunday Times

Join the Policy Institute and the Complex Life and Death Decisions group as we reveal findings from new polling and tease apart the principle from practice when it comes to the debate on assisted dying.