Assisted dying

Bob Taylor (Letters, 6 March) assumes any "informed and sincere choice", by definition, cannot be an affront to human dignity. In this assertion, he makes human dignity dependent on who makes the decision rather than the content of that decision. If disabled and seriously ill people are encouraged to see themselves as a burden to a cash-strapped NHS and thus to ask for death, no safeguard will protect them.

Margo MacDonald's bill will compel medical professionals and the wider society to regard killing as a rationally acceptable solution to illness and disability. And given the relative ease and cheapness of death compared with any sort of care, what safeguard will prevent killing from becoming not just one treatment option, but the preferred option, to be urged on anyone too selfish to make the "informed and sincere choice" of a quick and convenient death?

DR STEPHEN WATT

Greenfield Crescent

Edinburgh