“The recent bill of law, submitted last Saturday February 3^rd by the Leftist union (Bloco de Esquerda) to make euthanasia legal in Portugal, will seriously affect the doctor-patient relationship and will destroy medicine itself”. This was written earlier today by the Portuguese Catholic Doctors’ Association (Amcp) in a release, in which it states that “there is no ethical legitimacy in approving a law the enforcement of which will create general mistrust in the doctor-patient relationship, because the power to cause or bring forward someone’s death, even at the patient’s request, is against medicine itself, it’s a power that cannot but destroy medicine”. The association, which in the public debate has repeatedly opposed to the legitimisation of euthanasia, also decries the expected involvement of doctors in a Committee for the assessment of early death processes. “Admitting that doctors may support or be involved in a death-causing decision to remove pain is by no means acceptable”, Amcp writes in its release. Under no circumstance “can euthanasia or assisted suicide be considered a medical deed, since they are not meant to soothe or treat a disease but to put an end to a patient’s life”.