Assisted dying: Campaigners leave Dignity in Dying over law change policy only for people with less than six months to live

Several Welsh campaigners for assisted dying have left the organisation Dignity in Dying because they disagree with its policy of restricting a change in the law to people with no more than six months to live.

Miriam Day, orthopaedic surgeon and specialist in musculoskeletal trauma at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, was until recently the key campaigner in Cardiff’s Dignity in Dying group. She and nine others, of 12 active members, decided to leave Dignity in Dying after learning that its policy would not help people such as Paul Lamb, a man paralysed from the neck down. They have now joined the group My Death, My Decision (MDMD), which is calling for a broader change to the law to include terminally ill people and those with incurable suffering.

Day told The BMJ, “Dignity in Dying never made their policy transparent to me—you had to really search in the small print to find that they are only campaigning …