Where this was said
Daniel Sulmasy: The Case Against MAID
At 30:15 · chapter starts 26:20
Daniel Sulmasy enters the episode as its most combative voice — a physician-philosopher-friar who left a Franciscan order after more than 25 years to marry, but whose views on MAID come primarily from his bedside experience rather than his faith. He begins with a blunt three-part indictment: bad medicine, bad ethics, bad public policy [1] — Daniel Sulmasy "Daniel Sulmasy argues that medical aid in dying is bad medicine because the reasons people actually seek it — loss of control, fear of bein…" 28:49 . On medicine: the reasons people actually follow through on MAID — loss of control, fear of being a burden, loss of autonomy — are not medical diagnoses, and they are not appropriate grounds for a physician to prescribe lethal medication. On ethics: the Hippocratic covenant is built on three bedrock rules — no secrets disclosed, no sex, no killing — and MAID violates the last. On policy: what Sulmasy calls 'vaporware' — every guardrail that legislators promise will hold has historically been dismantled. He cites states eliminating waiting periods, waiving residency requirements, and the Canadian system expanding from terminal illness to non-terminal conditions and potentially to mental illness as its sole criterion. His conclusion is not that he expects to win politically, but that history will vindicate him when society 'comes to its senses.'
Daniel Sulmasy argues that medical aid in dying is bad medicine because the reasons people actually seek it — loss of control, fear of being a burden, loss of autonomy — are not medical diagnoses. It's also bad ethics because it breaks the foundational covenant of medicine, and bad public policy because every safeguard has historically been eroded.
