In New Zealand, aiding and abetting a person to commit suicide or euthanasia even with consent is unlawful. The introduction of a third Bill on assisted dying to the House of Representatives following a high-profile court case afforded an opportunity for examining how assisted dying was discussed in the public sphere. In this article, we report on a discourse analysis of a selection of social media to illustrate the ways in which citizens participate in the voluntary euthanasia debate. The volume of social media posts that made up our data set suggests that the legalisation of assisted dying is a highly topical and deeply salient societal issue. Social media postings represent the voices of ordinary citizens who may not participate in formal public consultation processes. Based on our analysis, the assignment of binary conclusions about public opinion is simplistic and fails to adequately represent the intricacies of public debate. Contributors’ posts reveal deeply held sociocultural values, as well as tensions about the relationship between citizens and the apparatus of government.

We're starting our 'metabolism' module at med school this week, and I'm dreading it with every fibre of my being. You see, I am going to be a doctor, and I am fat.I'm not the type of fat you feel after you've had a big lunch, and your usually flat belly is protesting against the waistband of your jeans. I'm the real kind. My body mass index hovers a couple of points below 'morbidly obese'.I worry a lot about what people will think of me as a fat doctor. For the smart arses among you, of course I've tried to be non-fat, it goes without saying. The thing is, although, bodies don't really like weighing less all of a sudden and are pretty good at reversing things in the long run. Mostly my body settles back to the same size 18 shape eventually.I am always aware of my fatness, but perhaps more so here at medical school. We are training to work with bodies, and mine is a type of body we warn our patients not to have. It is the first thing described in every list of 'modifiable risk factors'. A colleague suggests 'Just don't let yourself get too fat' as we talk about preventing a certain type of cancer. A final exam question asks us to list four poor health outcomes associated with obesity.Every week we learn physical examination skills by taking turns at being the patient, assessing body parts in various states of undress. I am usually the only fat person in the room.On good days I'm relieved that the classmates who practise on me will have had the opportunity to examine diverse bodies. On bad days I feel like a huge inconvenience. These physical examinations are hard enough already. We are third years and can't do much of anything yet. We say 'Oh yes, I feel it' even when we can't. We hope to feign confidence, if not competence; more often than not, we manage neither.Fat bodies are hard to examine. It's harder to palpate for a bony structure when it is obscured by a thicker layer of fatty tissue. Harder to count rib spaces to tentatively place a stethoscope above a mitral valve. Harder to feel the border of a liver slide over our index finger.

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