⚖️ The Core Ethical Flaw in the Bill’s Approach to Informed Consent

1️⃣ Definition of Diagnosis Is Narrow and Conventional

  • The medical assessments determining eligibility for assisted dying are based solely on conventional biomedical models.
  • The physicians involved are generally not trained (nor legally permitted, in some cases) to assess the potential relevance of complementary, integrative, or alternative therapies.
  • In the UK, the Cancer Act 1939 (Section 4) specifically prohibits anyone other than registered medical practitioners from “advertising or offering to treat cancer,” thereby effectively outlawing many alternative cancer treatments.

2️⃣ Incomplete Disclosure of Options Violates True Informed Consent

  • For consent to be informed, patients must be given:
    • full knowledge of their condition,
    • full knowledge of all available options (conventional and complementary),
    • full understanding of risks, uncertainties, and possible outcomes of alternative therapies, especially in fields like integrative oncology, palliative nutrition, psychospiritual care, energetic medicine, etc.
  • Since these are not even offered as part of the assessment process, patients are often consenting based on a partial and restricted information set.

3️⃣ Decision-Making Panels Are Similarly Restricted

  • The proposed “expert panels” (or judges, under previous versions) rely on assessments provided by conventionally trained doctors.
  • These panels do not include specialists in integrative, holistic, or spiritual healing modalities.
  • Therefore, any “competence” the panel claims to have in assessing informed consent is by definition incomplete — because their knowledge base excludes entire fields of medical knowledge and healing possibilities.

4️⃣ Legal & Ethical Breach

  • This creates an ethical double standard:
    • Conventional medicine asserts patients have “no further options” — based only on its own paradigm.
    • The patient is led to believe they are making a rational, informed choice — when in fact, the range of what has been considered is highly limited.

🚩 The Consequences

  • Patients may end their lives based on avoidable despair.
  • Therapies which may have extended life, improved quality, or provided alternative pathways are never discussed.
  • Consent becomes a theater of legality, not a true ethical consent process.

🧭 The Deeper Question

If the full spectrum of healing possibilities is excluded from diagnosis and counseling, then consent cannot be meaningfully informed.