Dr. Anne Doherty:

I thank the Senator. It is really complicated. I think everybody would want people to have the best possible quality of life as they approach their end. Nobody wants anybody to suffer in any way, whether that is physical, psychological or otherwise.

I do have a little bit of concern about how that would happen in practice. If we could limit it to just people with a terminal illness and if it were to have no impact on anybody else, that would be one thing. I do not know if the Senator has had a chance to look at the deliberations by the Danish ethics commission. They looked at it from the perspective of full autonomy. Everybody has access to this and nobody has access that but, in the middle, there is a whole range of a continuum. They were worried about how to keep it to one part of that continuum without it being challenged. If we say it is for terminal illness, people will then ask about having it for somebody with dementia. If it could be localised to that group of people, that would be one thing but my real concern is that it may not be possible to localise it to that. What, then, would be the impact on people with mental illness or other parts of society that might be disadvantaged by it?