A lawyer from Essex spoke in favour of legalising assisted dying during a televised debate held recently.

Professor Sabine Michalowski, who lectures at the University of Essex in Colchester, made calls for a change in the law as part of an interview on Aljazeera’s Inside Story when she appeared alongside representatives from the Campaign for Dignity in Dying and the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

“Lots of patients are demanding assisted dying and so I think the law would really fail them if we simply said we cannot find criteria in order to deal with this appropriately and control potential abuse,” she said.

Prof Michalowski acknowledged there had been abuse in countries where assisted dying is legal but argued that mistreatment also happened in those where it remained illegal.

She said that abuse was also taking place in the UK “because it’s all in the dark, in secrecy, and so there is not even then a discussion about what good practice would be and under what circumstances it should be acceptable”.

“So I’m not sure the abuse problem is necessarily helped by simply prohibiting assisted dying completely,” she added.