Wendy and I were both struck by the measured tone of this week’s Parliamentary debate on assisted dying.

It’s a complicated topic. To me, the starting point is certainly that assisted death should be legal, but the practicalities are complicated. They are probably best left to people with more expertise than me.

It strikes me that the medicalisation of death complicates the picture. It is not obvious to me that it should be up to doctors to arbitrate on the processes surrounding the universal human experience of death.

It is, of course, appalling to contemplate that representatives of our state religion, in which only a minority of the population express a belief, will get a Parliamentary vote on the issue… but that’s hardly unique to this topic. It is absurd and unjust that bishops continue to sit in the House of Lords, and if this debate forces a re-examination of that issue, then that will be a welcome side effect.

I was particularly interested to read Richard Smith’s thoughts on this week’s debate, as a former editor of the BMJ who has spent much longer thinking about the topic than I have.