I HAVE great respect for Margo MacDonald's personal campaign to change the Scottish law on assisted suicide in the Scottish Parliament.

This clearly comes from her personal experience of illness and a desire to help others.

Her first bill was constructed in an ethical framework but rejected by MSPs. Her second go at changing the legislation adopts a pragmatic, practical approach which she feels preserves patient autonomy and supports individual decisions with a self-administered "death pill" prescribed by a doctor.

I remain against the concept of assisted suicide after 34 years' experience as a GP.

The majority of protagonists for a change in the assisted suicide law have never listened to somebody who has attempted suicide and later regretted things.

They have never had to assess mental capacity in older people. They have no concept as to how mental capacity changes and has subtle degrees.

They have never listened to the list of medically-prescribed street drugs for purchase by troubled young people and criminals. They have never dealt with an adult protection issue in a vulnerable adult. They will have never given a poor prognosis in cancer and seen the patient live beyond the best professional guess at prognosis. They may not have witnessed a family pulling together to give death with dignity at home to somebody with dread disease.

Margo MacDonald's bill is a pragmatic solution to an ethical problem, but these are the practical problems I anticipate of putting her theory into clinical practice.

Most doctors in the NHS today are just too busy to contribute to this repeated debate in the Scottish Parliament and I hope the MSPs with their fingers on the buttons have at least read this letter and talked to some vulnerable people and care professionals with some practical experience before deciding their voting intention.

Dr James DM Douglas,

Luskentyre,

Seafield Gardens, Fort William.