The Monday Interview: A growing number of medical professionals are supporting the idea of assisted dying. Dr Ann McPherson – who herself has only months to live – tells Jeremy Laurance why.
Some accuse her of advocating “medical killing”. Others claim that she is destroying the trust between doctors and patients. But Ann McPherson is not deterred as she prepares to step up her campaign to change the law on assisted dying – at the same time as preparing for her own death.
As the joint author of a million-selling guide to teenage health (Diary of a Teenage Health Freak, now translated into 27 languages) and the founder of the first – hugely successful – website where patients could share experiences of disease, she is one of the best known GPs in the UK.
Those projects grew directly from her experience as the mother of three children and, later, as a patient with breast cancer, suffering the indignities familiar to millions who have had their bodies poisoned with chemotherapy but which are underplayed by doctors.
Filed under: love, morality, philosophy, politics
