The Irish Times science writer has warned that assisted suicide will be the next item on the agenda [1] following the abortion referendum. Writing in today’s Irish Times, William Reville, emeritus professor of biochemistry at UCC, said the next debate in Ireland will be about whether assisted suicide should be legally available to ‘incurably ill patients suffering great distress’. He himself would not favour the proposal because he believes “it contradicts the intrinsic moral value of human life”. And, while Christian ethics rules out suicide and hospice clinicians give assurance that there is no pain that cannot be managed, he acknowledges that it is a difficult ethical and political question. Nonetheless, he strongly disagrees with the idea that all lucid adults, healthy as well as ill, should have the legal right to end their own lives. “Assenting to this would normalise suicide and euthanasia in society. We currently acknowledge that every human life is of incalculable value but, if suicide and euthanasia were normalised, human life would quickly come to be evaluated on utilitarian grounds. We must be careful not to foolishly wish for unlimited human freedom to choose – we wouldn’t like it if we got it.”