Doctor speaks against assisted suicide in Ireland: ‘Death is not healthcare’

An Irish palliative care specialist has spoken against assisted suicide, saying death is not a solution.

During Palliative Care Week in September, themed “Living for today, planning for tomorrow”, Dr Regina McQuillan, spoke to the Irish Times about the issues with assisted suicide from an end-of-life care perspective.

McQuillan, who is a palliative care consultant, opposed Ireland’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2024 on behalf of the Irish Palliative Medicines Consultants Association when it was being debated. The Bill has stalled following a change of Government.

‘Disability discrimination’

McQuillan stated that assisted suicide “creates the idea that for some situations, death is a solution to some problems”, and suggested that it should not be seen as a healthcare issue, but rather as “a societal response to distress”.

The doctor added: “research shows that most people look for assisted suicide or euthanasia when they lose independence”.

She criticised discriminatory attitudes towards disabled people and reasoned that people need help to live well rather than viewing a life dependant on care and support as one not worth living.

‘Suicide influencer’

In England, Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is progressing through the House of Lords, where Peers debated it last month.

Baroness Fox of Buckley spoke during the debate, stating: “The Bill unsettles centuries old medical ethics. It rebrands assisting someone to die as a medical treatment, upending its understood meaning.

“The Bill rewrites the role of doctors, they will no longer be guided by the ‘do no harm’ ethos of preserving and protecting life, and instead the Bill mandates that they actively engage in taking a patient’s life by supplying lethal drugs that will kill them.”

Condemning those online who try to entice people to kill themselves, she said her “greatest dread is that this state-licensing of suicide could unleash a regressive culture change”, where the legislation becomes an “embodiment of a suicide influencer” to young people.