Spectator letters: A surgeon writes on assisted dying, and an estate agent answers Harry Mount

Real help for those in pain

Sir: The fickleness of existence is exemplified by the fact that being Tony Blair’s ex-flatmate puts you in the position of further eroding the moral fabric of the nation without ever having had stood for office. An advert for Charlie Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill is rather cynically placed opposite Jenny McCartney’s nuanced examination of the implications of this potential legislation (‘Terminally confused’, 5 July). Among other points, Ms McCartney quite correctly reprises the ‘slippery slope’ argument, which in the case of legalised abortion turned out to have been prophetic.

One of her issues is the involvement of medical staff. Apart from the actual executioner’s role, there is the thorny problem of what constitutes ‘dying’. Every week I come across patients with terminal illness for whom an exact timescale is simply not possible. In another context, Keynes was quite correct to point out that ‘In the long term we’re all dead.’