r/ClaudeAI: Users Report Claude Opus 4.8 Refuses MAiD Research Queries Handled by Earlier Models

Researchers on r/ClaudeAI report that Claude Opus 4.8 consistently refuses prompts related to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) that earlier Claude models handled without issue, triggering a boilerplate safety refusal citing harm potential. Multiple palliative care researchers and ethics faculty in the thread confirm the regression extends even to bibliographic queries citing published peer-reviewed literature. Anthropic has not publicly commented on the reported behavior change, and it is unclear whether the refusal pattern reflects a deliberate policy update or an unintended side effect of safety training.