Professor Roderick MacLeod:

I agree with this. I do not believe there is a safe system yet. I know the Australians are enthusiastic about their legislation. I can speak about New Zealand and I do not believe ours is particularly safe. My plea is that if legislation is passed there is a way to closely examine exactly what happens. Why is somebody asking for assisted dying? What is the nature of the intolerable suffering? Who determined that the prognosis was X number of months? How available was expert palliative care? Is there really existence of mental health problems? As I have said, at a conservative estimate 25% of people approaching end of life have a depressive illness. Have they had recent bereavements? Are they lonely? Do they have financial worries? All of these things contribute to somebody's desire for a hastened death and yet in our legislation none of this is recorded. All that is recorded is what the Act says has to be recorded, which is age, ethnicity and diagnosis. There is nothing about how the prognosis was reached, what the suffering is or how well the medication worked. The reports we have had so far, and there have only been two, have been remarkably bland and really worse than useless in regard to saying whether or not the legislation is safe.