The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, has published today her latest Annual Report, Generation Genome. It brings together independently authored chapters with an overview from the CMO reflecting on them and making recommendations for future policy. She sees the 100,000 Genome Project as an important showcase for what can be achieved through standardisation and coordination to provide the infrastructure that enables genomic medicine to move from a fragmented set of loosely connected ‘cottage industries’ into a comprehensive service that can make ‘precision medicine’ available to all those who can benefit from it. (more…)

This morning, an unprecedented number of peers are seeking to speak in the Second Reading of Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill. Anglican Archbishops have taken to the newspapers to contribute their views. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, wrote in the Daily Mail that ‘the case of Mr Nicklinson had exerted the ‘deepest influence’ on him. ‘His distress made me question my motives in previous debates. Had I been putting doctrine before compassion, dogma before human dignity?’ In the Observer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was reported as being in favour of assisted dying, saying ‘What is life? And isn’t death part of living – a natural part of life?’ and reflected on the indignities to which Nelson Mandela was subjected at the end of his life. (more…)

In the recent court judgement on Tony Nicklinson’s challenge to the current law on euthanasia Lord Justice Toulson quoted from the report of the Falconer Commission on Assisted Dying on a number of occasions. He said that it ‘contains an interesting analysis of arguments and views, but it would not be right for the court to treat it as having some form of official or quasi-official status’ (para 24).

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