The debate on whether doctors should be able to assist their suicidal patients has moved on. My reference to Lord Mustill's comments in the Bland case was intended to draw attention to his recognition that the decision of the judges to remove artificial feeding from Tony Bland left the law "misshapen" - something of an English understatement.

The law was breached if, in his judgment, the intended purpose was to "kill" the patient. Tony Bland was not dying. It is important to note this. The intention of the law, whether prescriptive or facultative, is what matters.

Since the removal of capital punishment, the law of the land does not countenance the death of any member of society, whether direct or indirect, and I believe it should remain so. The Catholic ethical position is not "vitalist"; it does not strive to keep a patient alive at all costs and irrespective of the wishes of the patient. It is as abusive to continue to ventilate a patient who is virtually dead as it is to force-feed a dying patient.

This is altogether different from providing the patient with the wherewithal to kill himself.

Mario Conti, Archbishop of Glasgow, 196 Clyde Street, Glasgow.

Bishop Mario Conti's response to Paul Brownsey (Letters, August 4) has the definitive air of an argument from authority - ultimately invoking God, and then Cicero, to bolster his position. However, one may ask whether this argumentative approach, which characterised theological and philosophical thinking throughout the medieval period, is appropriate in our own pluralist society of the 21st century, when issues such as assisted death require analysis and, ultimately, consensus.

The difficulty is that arguments from authority hinge upon the validity of the authority quoted - in Bishop Conti's case, God and Cicero. Pragmatic when everyone believes in a single god (should a deity be the quoted authority), though damaging without this shared consensus. Thus, arguments from authority shift the debate to a position of one side asserting an authority which others do not recognise (as is likely the case in a pluralist society characterised by multifarious belief-systems, and differing convictions as to the "common good"). The result, in the case of assisted death, is that the ethical, legal, moral and psychological issues go neglected to the detriment of those currently dying in hospitals throughout the UK.

Adam Reilly, Glasgow.

Archbishop Conti appears to think that a law specifying that only doctors could take life when terminally ill patients requested it "would place doctors virtually above or outside the law'". By parity of reasoning we must say that a law restricting the performance of operations to surgeons places them "virtually above or outside the law'". And that "virtually" is suspicious: either the doctors would be "above or outside the law" or they would not. It appears that Archbishop Conti wants the rhetorical effect of the phrase "above or outside the law" while withdrawing from its standard meaning, since if the law did, indeed, authorise doctors, and doctors only, to take life when terminally ill patients requested it, they would not be acting "above or outside the law".

Paul Brownsey, Department of Philosophy, Glasgow University.

David Shaw's letter illustrates how completely he misunderstands the Catholic Church's teaching on euthanasia. Killing someone by dehydrating them to death is obviously as wrong as killing with poison. Professor Hugh McLachlan seems not to get this point, either (Letters, August 5). To withdraw futile treatment is ethical and most sensible. The need for debate seems not as pressing as the need for contributors at least to understand the views they oppose.

John Deighan, Parliamentary Officer, Catholic Parliamentary Office, 5 St Vincent Place, Glasgow.