We need to talk about dying

Palliative care doctor says it is rare for dying to involve no suffering of any kind but it is equally rare for the suffering involved to be unendurably bad.

Most of the 600,000 people who die in Britain each year have a terminal illness.

Dying people do not typically, suffocate’ or “drown’ in their own bodily fluids, they do not writhe in agony, they are not “tortured”.

The deathbed in Britain today really, as Kit Malthouse claimed during the House of Commons ’ assisted dying debate on 29 November , “a place of misery, torture and degradation, a rain of blood and vomit and tears” for far too many people.

Anyone watching the debate would be forgiven for assuming that most deaths now involve immense, and often intractable, suffering.

The most potent intervention I can offer is not a supersized dose of diamorphine but a simple question.