Professor Richard Huxtable:

I will not labour my answer as I endorse readily a great deal of what Dr. Mills said in particular. I would ask the person in question - I have had these discussions many times - who they think should be allowed to have this, who should be allowed to provide it, who should not be allowed to have access to it and who should not be able to provide it. Depending on how that conversation goes, I would typically ask why the person has the views he or she has. I would not put it as baldly or potentially confrontationally as that, but it is always worth exploring what is motivating this. In my experience, one sometimes finds this is seen to be a cleaner, clearer and perhaps tidier and more comfortable way of dealing with something that will confront us all, namely, the dying process and death itself.

Sometimes one appreciates, as I do, that people are not always as well informed as one might hope about hospice care, palliative care and the various things that can be done to support people, including when they confront difficult diagnoses and prognoses. There is always more excavation and discussion to be had and more questions to be asked. Echoing Dr. Mills I point out, with caution, that some work was done by the organisation Care Not Killing. It ran a survey more than ten years ago, which was concerned about the framing effects of some of the opinion polls. These revealed high levels of support for assisted dying, which I admit are very much across the board. That survey suggested that sometimes people were potentially being influenced by when and how the questions were asked. Perhaps they did not have all of the information they needed about what is currently available or what the gold standard of care might be. They found that if the various options are put, support goes down. However, it is important to note in the interests of balance that, although support came down, it was still majority support exactly along the lines of recent Irish opinion polls. That is majority public support stacked in the direction of assisted dying.