|TOP|The Christian Medical Fellowship has joined in the legal challenge to the new name of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VES), ‘Dignity in Dying’ along with several other groups, including ALERT and the British Council of Disabled People.

The groups have launched the challenge under the Trademarks Act to prevent attempts by the VES “to monopolise the phrase such that only pro-euthanasia campaigners would be able to use it,” the CMF said in a statement released last week.

Under the Trademarks Act, “A trade mark shall not be registered if it is contrary to public policy or accepted morals, or of such nature to deceive the public”.

The VES first came under pressure in January this year from palliative care specialists who were “angered that the phrase ‘dignity in dying’, long associated with the hospice movement, had been hijacked by the pro-euthanasia lobby,” said CMF.

Pressure was also mounted on the VES earlier in the week at a high profile euthanasia debate filmed by the BBC documentary Panorama and due to be broadcast next month. In the major debate medics and lawyers voted overwhelmingly against euthanasia.

|AD|The legal challenge was formally launched by legal experts last Thursday following the news that VES would have the exclusive right to use ‘Dignity in Dying’ in connection with fundraising, political lobbying, legal documents, leaflets, newsletters, seminars, talks, education and research, if it is granted the ‘Dignity in Dying’ trademark.

VES has also met the criticism of the Association of Palliative Care, expressed in a letter written to the Trade and Industry secretary Alan Johnson on Jan. 20.

The letter read: “For the Voluntary Euthanasia Society to seek a monopoly of a common English phrase in order to invest it with a totally different meaning is dishonest and will create confusion.”

The CMF statement read: “The breadth of recent criticism seems to have been motivated by the concern that were the VES to be granted the trademark rights to 'Dignity in Dying', it would become illegal to use the phrase in the way many terminally ill people currently use it – to express their desire for better care and a better quality of life, not a desire for euthanasia or assisted suicide.”

The VES suffered a resounding defeat in the Panorama debate of 250 against to just 50 euthanasia supporters. Gill Gerhardi, a seriously disabled and wheel-chair bound lady, summed up the debate when she said: “What we want and need is not dignity in dying, but dignity in living.”