Died aged 65
Dr McPherson was a general practitioner who campaigned for a change in the law to allow terminally ill patients to be helped to die if that was their wish.
Her campaign began by accident. In July 2009, she learned that the pancreatic cancer with which she had been diagnosed two years earlier had returned.
She wrote an article in the British Medical Journal in which she castigated the medical Establishment for its insularity on the issue.
The defeat of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill in May 2006 - the last attempt to change the law - was attributed in large part to the decisions of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and GPs to oppose reform.
By contrast, the British Social Attitudes 2010 survey found 82 per cent of the public in favour of a change in the law.
"Part of the problem is that those deciding on the legal and political issues concerning assisted dying are not those facing immediate death themselves," she wrote.
"Why can't people have a rational discussion about assisted dying? Why can't it be available for those who want it as a choice?" The medical establishment was badly out of step with public opinion.
"Death is seen as a technological defeat," she observed. "Palliative care specialists see it as a failure if patients want an assisted death. I think that's ridiculous - it should be part of good palliative care. We have got into a terrible mess about keeping people alive when they shouldn't be."
She was inundated with emails and letters, almost all supporting her stance: "It made me think that, given how many doctors were for a change in the law, we ought to form a group."
In October 2010, she founded Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying, which now has more than 400 members, including some of the most eminent names in medicine.
When Ann McPherson's critics accused her of advocating "medical killing" and destroying the trust between doctors and patients, she countered that the palliative care lobby was not always entirely honest about what such care can offer: "One certainly can say 'you won't get pain' but you may not get the quality of life you feel you can live with," she said.
"And they'll admit that privately, but they won't stand up and say it publicly."
