Sir Iain Chalmers

Sir Iain Chalmers is a renowned medical researcher and founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, the first global evidenced based research network in medicine. He is the acting coordinator of the James Lind Initiative and received the British Medical Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Jean Eveleigh

Jean Eveleigh has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a genetic, degenerative condition that is progressively robbing Jean of all her bodily functions. She could lose control of her bladder and bowels and eventually the ability to move, eat, speak and breath without assistance and support.

Jean is calling for the legal right to be assisted to end her life when living becomes unbearable to her. Her disability means that Jean needs help with all aspects of everyday living – and would need help to die.

Prof. A C Grayling

A. C. Grayling is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy, and the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays. He is a columnist for Prospect magazine, and was for a number of years a columnist for the Guardian and Times. He has also contributed to many leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radios 4, 3, 2 and the World Service, for which he did the annual ‘Exchanges at the Frontier’ series; and he has often appeared on television. He has judged the Booker Prize, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Dr Phil Hammond

Dr Phil Hammond is a physician, broadcaster, comedian and commentator, best known for his regular column in Private Eye and appearances in the hit BBC television show Have I Got News For You, BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, and BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show. Dr Hammond worked as a lecturer at the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham, before going on to write ‘This Has All Been Said Before’; ‘Trust Me (I’m a Doctor)’, and ‘Trust Me, I’m (Still) a Doctor’. He served as the Vice President of the Patients Association.

Canon Rosie Harper

Rosie Harper graduated from Birmingham University, followed by post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music. Further studies included an MA in Philosophy and Religion, She is now Vicar of Great Missenden (where her professional singing career experience helps boost the choir) and Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham. She is chair of the Oxford Nandyal Education Foundation, an education charity in rural India.  A member of General Synod, Rosie writes for the Guardian, broadcasts regularly, and was a panel member for Any Questions.  She is deeply committed to working for issues of justice and equality within and beyond the church, and is one of very few serving Anglican Priests to campaign for a change in the law on Assisted Dying.

Virginia Ironside

Virginia Ironside has been a journalist and writer all her life, working mainly as an agony aunt for Woman magazines, the Sunday Mirror, the Independent, and The Oldie. She has also performed her own one-woman show, Growing Old Disgracefully, for the last ten years. Her twenty books include Chelsea Bird and a series starting with No, I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub, the diary of a sixty-year-old granny.

Dr Michael Irwin

Michael Irwin is a former GP and Medical Director of the United Nations. He held the post of Vice Chairman/ Chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society from 1995-2003, (now renamed Dignity in Dying). He was a founder member of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS)  and served as its Coordinator from 2009-2015, (a precursor to My Death, My Decision).

Adam Kay

Adam Kay is a multi-award-winning author, comedian and former doctor. This is Going to Hurt has sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 37 languages, and is the bestselling narrative non- fiction title of the decade, spending over a year at number one in the Sunday Times bestseller chart. It is soon to be a major comedy-drama for BBC/AMC starring Ben Whishaw. His follow-up, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, sold over 500,000 copies in the last three months of 2019, and his recent anthology Dear NHS was an instant Sunday Times number one, raising over £250,000 for charity. His first children’s book Kay’s Anatomy: A Complete (and Completely Disgusting) Guide to the Human Body is published by Puffin. 

John Knight CBE

John Knight has a life limiting progressive disability and like the vast majority of disabled people in the UK wants to choose how and when he dies. He strongly believes in disabled peoples autonomy and self determination and that this should cover both how we live AND how we die. He hopes through MDMD to echo the voices of the majority of disabled people who are widely ignored, unheard and misrepresented in this urgent national debate.

His career has spanned the voluntary and statutory sectors including the Department of Health, Leonard Cheshire Disability and the Commission for Public Appointments. He held National Board level directorships of the Commission for Social Care Inspection (now part of the Care Quality Commission); the Charity Commission and the General Social Care Council. Additionally his public service has included the Magistracy, NHS Governance roles and Social Housing.

john.knight@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Dame Prue Leith

Dame Prue Leith is well known not only for her long-standing success in many aspects of the food and catering industry, but also for her instantly recognisable presence in the media. In recent years Prue has become a household name as a judge on The Great British Bake Off and has completed her one-woman show Nothing in Moderation, culminating at The London Palladium.

Dame Prue’s interest in the campaign for legalisation of assisted dying stems from witnessing the suffering of her brother, David, who died from bone cancer in 2012. She questions why people like David are not able to die on their own terms. Prue appeared in the recent Channel 4 documentary Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip, in which she thoughtfully and cogently put the case for a law for the UK.

Photo by Geoff Pugh

Dr Henry Marsh

Dr Henry Marsh CBE, is a leading neurosurgeon and best selling author of “Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery” and “Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery”, which became a number 1 Sunday Times bestseller. His work has been the subject of two major BBC documentaries – “Your Life in Their Hands” in 2003 and “The English Surgeon” in 2009 which won an Emmy. Until 2015 he served as the senior consultant at St George’s Hospital, working within the UK’s leading brain surgery unit.

Miriam Margolyes

The actor Miriam Margolyes, OBE, is known for many and varied roles, such as in Call the Midwife, Romeo + Juliet, Blackadder, and the Harry Potter films. She has appeared in nearly 175 feature films, TV Programmes and Theatre Productions. Miriam received the Best Supporting Actress award at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role in Little Dorrit and BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence. Recent acclaim for Miriam came for the two-part BBC documentary Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure (2019), in which she looks at different approaches and attitudes to dealing with death.

Jane Nicklinson

I am the wife of the late Tony Nicklinson who fought the legal system for an assisted death following a catastrophic stroke that left him with Locked in Syndrome in 2005. Tony died in 2012 following the High Court judgement and I carried his case to the Supreme and European Courts.

I am very passionate about this issue as Tony suffered immensely and nobody should have to suffer as he did. He was not terminal so a change in the law for the terminally ill would not have helped him. He would be very disappointed that we are still fighting for a change in the law that would have helped him end his suffering. He only wanted what able bodied people have, the ability to end their life when things become unbearable.

Professor David Nutt

David Nutt is the Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and Director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences. He is currently Chair of Drug Science (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD)) and President of the European Brain Council. He previously advised the Ministry of Defence, Department of Health and Home Office on the safety of medicines.

Photo: Vicky Symonds, via Flickr

Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow

Martin Rees has been Astronomer Royal since 1995. Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 2004-12. President of Royal Society 2005-10. Crossbencher in the House of Lords since 2005.

Kathleen Richardson, Baroness Richardson of Calow, OBE

Kathleen Richardson was the first female President of the Methodist Conference 1992-93. She retired from the House of Lords at the end of 2018 having served as a crossbencher for 20 years. In 2015  in a Science Meets Faith meeting she spoke openly about a Christian case for assisted dying.

Professor Wendy Savage

Professor Wendy Savage is a British gynaecologist and long standing campaigner for women’s rights in childbirth and fertility. She is an accomplished author having published the highly successful “Birth and Power”. She has previously served as a member of the General Medical Council and British Medical Association’s Ethics Committee, and has received the British Medical Journal’s award for an Outstanding Contribution to Health.

Dr. Martin Scurr

After several years in the NHS, Martin found that posts in general practice were over-subscribed, and he took the opportunity to migrate into private practice. This opened the way to a portfolio career, which included training in palliative care and accepting the role of medical director of a unit that evolved to become St John’s Hospice.

Martin has four decades experience of cradle to grave coverage of patients in the practice, as well as training in medical ethics and experience in alternative dispute resolution. This has underpinned his commitment to supporting the ethos of My Death My Decision.

‘Doctors Dissected’, written in conjunction with psychotherapist Jane Haynes, was published in 2015. This aimed to delve into themes that dominate the lives of doctors but which touch us all – birth, illness, despair and death.

Sir Stephen Sedley

Between 1999 and 2011 Sir Stephen sat on the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. He has also sat as an interim judge on the European Court of Human Rights and as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Since retiring he has been a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was formerly the President of the British Institute of Human Rights.

Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee is a journalist and writer. She has been a Guardian columnist since 1998, named Columnist of the Year in 2007 by the British Press Awards. She declined the CBE in 2000.

Photo: By cooperniall (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons