Professor Richard Huxtable:

I would reiterate the Deputy's question, although it is unhelpful. How do we define it? More helpfully, I hope, I would associate this question of how one can define intolerable pain or suffering approaching the end of life to the question of who gets to define it. For example, do we want this to rest entirely on the judgment of the person him or herself, the patient? Should it be the view of the patient shared by a clinician who will attest this is the case? Will we need a second opinion or even something beyond that? The question of how this is defined has to be intimately tied up with who gets to define it. Otherwise we are back to a debate we have had a great deal of today around incrementalism, slippery slopes and the like. I will not say anything further on that.