Thank you for your question.
For some neurological diseases, there are well-known clinical stages, which usually last several years. At the start of these diseases, people are encouraged to make plans for their financial and personal affairs. Medical assistance in dying may soon be part of these plans.
Of course, we'll see only in a few years whether we can act upon the choice that a person made five years beforehand. In other words, this 84-year-old woman, whose very organized text that I read to you shows her level of education and her clear-mindedness, is choosing to seek medical assistance in dying at a stage that will occur in four or five years.
For the committee's purposes, I'm simply asking whether you can add the concept of disease stages as part of the planning process for medical assistance in dying. This must be done without going into detail, because each disease has different stages. In the next few years, new treatments may emerge that will change the progression of the diseases. What won't change, however, are the references points, the key points in the progression of most of these diseases. I'm thinking of the loss of mobility and the first pneumonia, for example. These things won't change, even if therapeutic advances are made.