Most doctors focus on prolonging human life, but not today's guest.

Ellen Weave is a physician who spends her day's ending lives.

I have had these wonderful conversations with so many people where I say now that you have the approval to go ahead, when would you like to die?

Where would you like to die? Who do you want to invite to your death? Anything special you want at the day?

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Ellen Weeb lives and works in Canada, where medical assistance in dying, or maid, as it's abbreviated, is not only legal, it's widely practiced.

Almost 5% of all Canadian deaths are the result of physician assistance.

I began our conversation by asking Ellen to explain the history of Canada's law

enabling medical assistance and dying.

It was 2015 that Canadians were given this right.

There was a court case.

It was based on Kay Carter who had gone to Switzerland in order to get an assisted death.

And her family brought the case to say that she shouldn't have had to go to Switzerland,

that she had the right to control her own death and should have been able to have it in her own country.

And then we got our law in 2016 in June, and they added a whole lot of safeguards, rules, regulations that we all had to follow. Over the years, there have been one court challenge after another, so what we have

now is that people are allowed to request and assist to death if they have a grievous and irremediable

medical condition, are suffering unbearably, and are in an advanced state of decline of

capability. And they must have the ability to consent.

Of course, Canada isn't the only place that has assisted down, as you said, Switzerland,

I think it's been legal since 1942 or something like that.

And then Netherlands, it's been legal there and in Belgium since the early 2000s.

And there are a handful of other countries where it's allowed. I was surprised myself

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