Professor Desmond O'Neill:

There are worrying dynamics. I was a good friend of a professor of geriatrics in one of the academic medical centres in the Netherlands who felt that, because his geriatrician colleagues saw life according to a framework whereby they would carry out an assisted suicide, he had to do it. Therefore, there is pressure within the medical profession. The Lancetoutlines the talk within Canada about the sanctions that will be imposed on doctors who will not engage with what they call MAID, assisted suicide, or the sanctions that will be imposed on people who will not refer on cases for assisted suicide where they believe it is negative and unhelpful. There is already a sense of sanctioning on that side. As the Deputy is possibly aware, freedom of conscience is seen as being under considerabe threat in the ethics literature. Freedom of conscience is seen as an assault on rights. It is in a very difficult and dark place.