Canada’s assisted dying regime could provide a cover for medical staff with “serially homicidal personalities,” according to a controversial paper critics say provides no evidence patients could be preyed upon by criminal medical murderers.

“Canada’s MAID (medical assistance in dying) system is criticized as the most permissive or least safeguarded in the world, raising the question of whether it could protect patients who fit the clinical profile of adult victims of HSK (health-care serial killers) from a killer working as a MAID provider,” Christopher Lyon, a Canadian social scientist who teachers at the University of York in the United Kingdom, wrote in a newly published paper.