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Good evening, not that long ago.

I chaired a series of medical conferences where doctors were trying to agree their position on assisted dying.

More often than not, the majority seemed against being involved professionally.

I didn't become a doctor to kill people was a common refrain.

What was striking, though, was that most wanted the option of being helped to die themselves

if their lives were ending in hopeless and extreme circumstances.

The moral ambiguities weren't lost on them, and shortly afterwards the BMA dropped its opposition

to a change in the law that currently threatens anybody helping another's suicide with up to 14 years in jail.

The doctor's union is now studdedly neutral.

The public's view seems to have shifted further, faster, driven in part by high-profile people like Esther Ransom,

dealing with terminal or potentially terminal illnesses.

The latest opinion poll suggests two-thirds of us want assisted dying made legal,

and Sir Keir Stama, a cautious supporter of reforming the law, has talked of another free vote on the issue in Parliament.

Individual cases are often heart-rending and seem clear-cut in a society that increasingly values personal autonomy more than divine guidance.

But experience in other countries like Canada, where assisted dying is already legal, provides ammunition for opponents.

Supposedly strict conditions have been watered down, such that assisted dying could soon be allowable with

no physical illness at all. It said that the vulnerable have been pressured by people or circumstances

into ending their lives unnecessarily. It's a question not just about suffering, dignity and

compassion, but about the nature and purpose of life itself. Is it time to allow assisted dying?

That's our moral maize tonight.

The panel, Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and inter-religious studies at Edinburgh University,

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