17 November

Palliative care or assisted dying? As always the answer is probably neither of the extremes. And it’s not the middle or ‘moderate’ position either. Paul Keating has been out again, exercising his big Catholic muscles, unhelpfully. I don’t think many realise that palliative care was created by those vehemently opposed to assisted dying, it’s not something that came out of medicine itself. And they don’t realise that many still die horrible, painful deaths, even with the best palliative care. On the other hand the answer is unlikely to be just offering assisted dying. As the author says, the debate needs to shift frameworks.