Merciful course

AS WAS clearly seen in yesterday’s correspondence on assisted dying (Letters, 15 November), in controversial issues it is ­customary for some protagonists to “play the man rather than the ball.”

If I find the speculative theory of global-warming unsatisfactory and question its basic assumptions these questions are ignored and I am denounced as a “denier”.

Or if I express support for Margo MacDonald I must be a shyster cleric denying his Lord rather than a veteran parish minister driven by bitter experience to agree with her.

Margo’s Bill may fail to pass into law but the Commission on Assisted Dying is surely right to state: “The current legal status of assisted suicide is inadequate and incoherent.”

While safeguards need to be robust, the time has come for government to look again at the law because modern medicine is preventing nature taking its merciful course.

(Rev Dr) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews, Fife