Assisted dying: safety and access are not balanced in practice

Downar and colleagues wrongly claim that “eligibility criteria have little effect on who actually receives an assisted death,”1 which erases evidence that the expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada has led some people to seek death as an escape not from illness but from life and social suffering.

Within six years of introducing MAID for terminal conditions (track 1) in 2016, Canada became the number one euthanasia provider in the world.2 In 2021 the expansion …