Whatever the summer temperatures, there is going to be some hot air over the next week as we approach the debate in the House of Lords on Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill. We can expect to be lectured about compassion, reassured about safety and invited to see the American state of Oregon as the place to die – not unlike the way some people once commended the former Soviet Union as the model for living.Yet, if you look carefully into this complex and controversial subject, you will see there are some curious contradictions. Those who want to see the law changed never tire of pointing to opinion polls and telling us that licensing doctors to supply lethal drugs to seriously ill people is what the public wants and Parliament should listen to public opinion. Yet, oddly enough,