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Tuesday, 8 August, 2000, 17:27 GMT 18:27 UK
BMA Conference 1999
The British Medical Association (BMA) annual conference will debate a raft of controversial issues including calls for patients to pay to use the NHS, the legalisation of cannabis and for a cut in the junior doctors' working week. BBC News Online's Alexis Condon reports from Belfast.
Doctors have backed a call for medics to be able to take organs from dying patients for transplant unless they have specifically registered an objection.
An attempt to scrap guidelines that give doctors the go-ahead to withdraw artifical feeding and hydration from severely incapacitated patients has failed.
Doctors say the government's focus on waiting lists and the launch of the helpline NHS Direct are seriously flawed.
Doctors want bans on smoking in public places and on alcohol advertising in the cinema.
Doctors have rejected calls to legalise cannabis for medical use, and to decriminalise the drug for recreational use.
Junior doctors have warned they will take industrial action if the government does not improve their pay and conditions.
The debate on junior doctors stirred strong passions. BBC News Online gives a fuller flavour of the most telling contributions.
Doctors leaders are told that institutional racism exists in the NHS, and that action must be taken to root it out.
Doctors have called for the introduction of a non-adversial, no fault system of compensation for victims of medical negligence.
Doctors have rounded on the government for undermining their position and using media spin to sell policies that are bad for the NHS.
The BMA has dismissed a call to charge patients a £10 fee to consult their family doctor.
Buckinghamshire GP Dr Jonathan Reggler tells News Online why patient charges would help to save the NHS.
Welsh doctors will continue their campaign for a meningitis vaccine to be given routinely to children after they failed to get a debate on the subject at the BMA conference.
Dr Ian Bogle, chairman of the BMA council, warns it may no longer be possible for the NHS to provide a comprehensive service.
The BMA has launched a website which will allow the public to contribute views on how to formulate a policy on physician-assisted suicide.
Issues debated on the second day of the conference included whether people with hepatitis B should become doctors and whether more doctors should be recruited from overseas.
Issues debated on the first day of the BMA conference included millennium pay for doctors and the Private Finance Initiative. |
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