ArticleThe Ulster medical journal2025
First steps down the slippery slope?: An analysis of the slippery-slope argument and its application to the question of assisted suicide.
Article in The Ulster medical journal, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- An existential perspective on physician-assisted dying in contemporary legislative debates.Palliative & supportive care · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
On 29 November 2024, the House of Commons voted in favour of legalising assisted suicide. The aim of the Bill is to "allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life." At the time of writing, the Bill is under consideration at the Committee stage. This paper considers the implications of the bill and the appropriateness of using the "slippery slope" argument in its critique. It may be seen that when considering the practice of assisted suicide in jurisdictions where it has been legalised, the empirical form of the argument is shown to be valid. However, the logical form of the argument is less relevant as, once the principle is conceded, there are no further significant barriers and the slope is, in fact, a cliff edge. History shows that the proposed safeguards are unlikely to be robust or sufficient to withstand challenge.
Indexed as
Identifiers
40313997PMC12042852What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.