The Queensland Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2021, and reports that the Queensland Government will include mental suffering as a criterion, are of great concern to future medical practice.

The Bill appears based on the Victorian Bill of the same nature and suffers from the same assumptions and blind spots about how medical practice actually works.

It assumes that the exercise of compassion and immediate response to a person’s expressed wishes are the only matters of relevance, without any evaluation of the adequacy of the person’s current treatment, whether alternatives exist, or the long-term consequences for the community of this sort of legislation.  

It...