Keown-authored report on physician-assisted suicide widely cited in advance of vote in UK

Update: Letters to the editor from Professor Keown on the subject of the bill legalizing assisted dying have been published in the London Times (29 November 2024) and the Daily Telegraph (3 December 2024).

Physician-Assisted Suicide: Improving the Quality of the Debate, a report written for Policy Exchange, a leading think tank in the United Kingdom, by John Keown, DPhil, PhD, DCL, KIE Senior Research Scholar and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics, was widely cited in advance of a November 29 vote in Parliament on a bill legalizing assisted dying in England and Wales.

The report, which examines “the unintended consequences that would result from legalising assisted dying,” has been cited or discussed in  The Sunday Telegraph  (including in an editorial) and featured in The Mail on Sunday , the Sun on Sunday , The Observer , Prospect Magazine  and The Catholic Herald . It was also the focus of a column in The Daily Mail . 

Professor Keown has published widely in the law and ethics of medicine, specializing in issues at the beginning and end of life. He has served as a member of the Ethics Committee of the British Medical Association and has been regularly consulted, not least by legislators and the media, on legal and ethical aspects of medicine. The report is available at the Policy Exchange website.