CONSIDERING EUTHANASIA
by William Thomas
Is Canada’s world-leading Medical Assistance In Dying a beacon of hope and compassion for an aging population — or a money-saving cull of the indigent and non-terminally infirm?
Euthanasia, in which lethal drugs are injected intravenously to end a patient’s or prisoner’s life, is currently practiced in just seven of this world’s 195 countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, some Australian states, Colombia and Canada.
MAiD was legalised in 2016 after the Supreme Court of Canada found that: “the laws prohibiting physician-assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security of the person of individuals who have a grievous and irremediable medical condition.” Those laws, the court said, “interfere with liberty by constraining the ability of such individuals to make decisions concerning their bodily integrity and medical care, and with security of the person by leaving such individuals to endure intolerable suffering.”
Since then, the number of Canadians dying prematurely by Medical Assistance in Dying” has risen thirteenfold. With less than 3.5% of requests denied, MAiD is now tied with cerebrovascular diseases is now the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.
In British Columbia, there were 10,092 doctor-assisted deaths in 2021; 13,241 in 2022.
Unlike other medical procedures requiring months-long waits, Canadians with chronic conditions who no longer want to live can see a MAiD practitioner in only two business days. According to Health Canada, the wait time between requesting MAiD and death is often 11 days.
“I don’t know any other procedure under Canada’s public healthcare system that you can get as quickly as MAiD,” says investigative journalist, Alexander Raikin.
A 2021 Senate amendment that would have allowed people who fear being diagnosed with dementia or other competence-eroding conditions to make advance requests for an assisted death has been set aside for later review.
“BEAUTIFUL” DEATHS
In the anti-MAiD film, Better Off Dead? a euthanasia “provider” calls this some of the most rewarding and beautiful work they have ever done. Vancouver RN Paul Mehennis explains that “far too many people” don’t get the opportunity “to express to their loved ones just how much they’ve valued their shared life, how grateful they are for those experiences, and to convey their love for one another. When I succeeded in relieving suffering, those were the most rewarding moments of my career.”
For these reasons, says this RN, “We advocate for an individuals' right to make informed decisions about their own life and death, within a framework of reasonable restrictions and safeguards,” says this RN. “It’s about respecting personal autonomy when it comes to how much intolerable and irremediable suffering a person is willing to endure.”
But what if their pain and suffering is much less than physically “intolerable”?
DO NO HARM?
In September 2022, The Lancet worried that “What was originally conceived as an exceptional practice in medicine has quickly become normalised.
While the primary aim of “assisted dying” legislation is to provide a “safe and comfortable” death to patients facing unbearable suffering at the end of life, seminar notes from the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers reveal doctors openly discussing the euthanisation of patients whose only underlying condition was poverty — and suggested how to manage their own “moral distress” at these cases!
“On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable,” AP reported. In one case, though his patient met legal criteria, a doctor hesitated because the man cited reduced government payments as a key factor in his decision.
Another MD questioned whether the fear of living in a nursing home was truly intolerable.
“I don’t want (euthanasia) to become the solution to every kind of suffering out there,” a physician wrote to colleagues on one of the private forums.
Doctors and nurses “do not treat MAiD as an option of last resort,” protested an August 2024 report by the Christian think tank Cardus.
The nonprofit organization, Inclusion Canada regularly hears from people with disabilities who are offered euthanasia, including one disabled woman whose physiotherapist suggested it when she sought help for a bruised hip.
“Assisted dying was not meant to become a routine way of dying. Court rulings stressed that it be a ‘stringently limited, carefully monitored system of exceptions’,” writes Alexander Raikin, a Visiting Fellow in bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center whose research focuses on the dignity of human life and end-of-life issues.
PEDAL TO THE METAL
Slamming “Canada’s unique pedal-to-the-metal approach to assisted dying,” FORBES charged that Canadian physicians are “routinely and all too casually” offering assisted suicide “alongside other medical interventions” to COVID “vaccine” injured, the impoverished, and other non-terminally ill patients.
“The willingness of doctors to usher patients into early graves is disturbing. We are seeing before our very eyes the transformation of medicine from the principles of care and doing no harm to the ethic of killing when deemed suitable,” declares the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC)’s Executive Director for Legal Services, Michael Robinson.
COVID VAX DISABILTIES & EUTHANASIA TRENDS
Described as “deliberate aggravated assault”, Pfizer and the CDC have admitted that the “vax” neither prevents infection nor halts transmission of the COVID-19 (influenza) coronavirus. Out of 12.5 billion COVID injections tabulated by Our World in Data, a new worldwide study confirms zero excess deaths above normal trend lines from the coronavirus — and 16.9 million vaccine-associated deaths up to the end of 2022.
In October 2023, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics found the number of disabled American adults considered unable to work had grown by more than 3.5 million since January 2020. Over 50 million Americans are estimated to have sustained heart damage from the jabs.
“I am truly offended by the trend of offering active euthanasia to those injured by the COVID-19 vaccines,” states Dr. Joel Wallskog, a Wisconsin orthopedic surgeon who stopped practicing medicine after being injured by Moderna’s COVID-19 “vaccine”. MAiD, he continues, “highlights the gaslighting and the sheer abandonment of the COVID-19 vaccine-injured community. We need research, providers that acknowledge these injuries, and effective diagnostics and treatments. We don’t need to be sent off to slaughter.”
In 2024, researchers from the Netherlands looking at 47 countries reporting all-cause mortality for 2020–2022, found the number of excess deaths in those countries alone numbered 3,098,456.
Are COVID-19 “vaccinations” forced by fear and government mandates the reason that the monthly average of athlete deaths is now 1,700% higher than the expected rate?
Are the estimated 2.2 billion global injuries from the COVID mRNA injections accelerating post-2022 surges in euthanasia?
Comments molecular biologist Christina Parks, PhD: “When you mandate an experimental medical intervention that destroys health, and then you offer euthanasia as a solution, that looks a lot like population control. Are we human beings?”
“We are witnessing an alarming trend where people with disabilities are seeking assisted suicide due to social deprivation, poverty, and lack of essential supports,” worries Krista Carr, executive vice president of Inclusion Canada. “It’s time to put an end to helping people with disabilities commit suicide and start supporting them to live.”
“This law also sends a devastating message that life with a disability is a fate worse than death, undermining decades of work toward equity and inclusion. It’s time to put an end to helping people with disabilities commit suicide and start supporting them to live.”
In September 2022, the renowned medical journal, The Lancet worried that “What was originally conceived as an exceptional practice in medicine has quickly become normalised. Even before the law is set to be expanded to include mentally ill patients, we already have worryingly high numbers of people dying.”
SPUC noted that “Canadian funeral homes are now offering ‘dystopian’ assisted suicide rooms for individuals to die in, expediting the process from suicide to coffin under one roof.” A SPUC spokesperson stated, “Assisted suicide, which is not medicine, is fast becoming the default response to the challenges of sickness, old age and mental illness in Canada.”
ORGAN GRINDERS
“Canada is now the global epicentre of harvesting organs from [participating] patients who have undergone doctor-assisted suicide,” the National Post reported in 2023. MAiD is the world’s fastest-growing assisted-dying program. While injecting lethal drugs intravenously to end a patient’s life is currently practiced in seven countries, Canada stands alone in approving assisted suicide by a nurse practitioner.
Moreover, with more than 10,000 Canadians now dying from medically assisted death annually, nearly half of all worldwide Organ Donation After Euthanasia are Canadians.
SLOW DOWN!
Comments Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Executive Director, Michael Robinson,“Wherever assisted suicide is introduced, the rate inexorably climbs year on year, just as eligibility becomes ever more expansive."
An August 2023 memo from Quebec’s Commission on End-of-Life Care told doctors to reduce assisted suicide permissions following an alarming province-wide 54% rise in assisted suicides in just one year.
“In an era where we recognize the right to die with dignity, we must do more to guarantee the right to live with dignity,” insists Canada’s human rights commission head, Marie-Claude Landry.
Dr. Ramona Coelho, a Canadian family physician told the Associated Press: “Most Canadians think that this is a service of compassion… when, in fact, the system is being applied so liberally and so easily in such a short time period that people are dying who would’ve recovered with greater care and resources to live.”
In 2021, “three United Nations human rights experts condemned the Canadian legislation as having a “discriminatory impact “on disabled people and running contrary to international human rights standards.”
YOUTUBE HORROR
A horrific YouTube interview by well-known Clinical Psychologist and Professor Emeritus at U. of Toronto, Dr. Jordan Peterson with anti-MAiD activist Kelsi Sheren has terrorized 1.4 million viewers with claims that euthanasia is being pushed to slash palliative care costs by Canadian doctors using the same drugs administered for capital punishment that drown recipients in their own fluids for up to 24 hours — while a paralytic drug prevents them from crying out.
Paul Mehennis, a Registered Nurse in BC who’s taught MAiD to healthcare professionals, calmly eviscerates those 13 minutes of wildly misinformed speculation. While Mehennis agrees that when a prisoner is executed in the USA, autopsies often show that their lungs are full of fluid — indicating that they likely experienced a death similar to drowning — this MAiD experienced RN helpfully points out that the three medications used for MAiD in Canada — midazolam, propofol and rocuronium — are completely different from the pentobarbital used in American executions.
Around 78% of individuals requesting MAiD receive palliative care, with an additional 10% having access to palliative care but choosing to refuse it.
It’s a criminal offense in Canada to counsel a patient to die by suicide. Canada’s last execution was in 1962.
“There's no scientific basis for assuming that the drugs used in MAiD could cause fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema),” Mehennis states; an opinion emphatically backed by a veteran Vancouver anesthesiologist. Additionally, lungs donated by patients at the end of life are “rigorously inspected” before transplantation.
After medical coma has been induced, death by IV typically takes 5-10 minutes. The steps followed in euthanizing patients in Canada include:
1. Light sedation and reduction of anxiety.
2. Very deep sedation/medical coma.
3. Stopping the patient’s diaphragm with a paralytic, if this hasn’t occurred already.
EUTHANASIA PROCEDURES IN CANADA
Propofol is initially administered intravenously to put patients “into a very deep medical coma” in which “a person’s mind and body are essentially separated,” Mehennis relates.
“In this state, there is no awareness of their surroundings, and they will not experience anything that is happening. It’s not that you were merely unconscious during this period — your consciousness was completely turned off; there was no experience to be had.”
After propofol is used “for a peaceful passing,” a paralytic is given last to shut down the lungs — “most often after the person has already died.”
SLIPPERY SLOPE?
For Paul Mehennis — and many aging Canadians — euthanasia is about “respecting personal autonomy when it comes to how much intolerable and irremediable suffering a person is willing to endure.”
But Canada now allows euthanasia for people suffering from serious but nonfatal medical conditions and disabilities.
“Eligible patients don’t need to have a terminal illness but simply a life-limiting disability. Physicians are proposing euthanasia as a choice of equal standing amongst other options for treatment and palliative care — in some situations without the patient themselves raising the topic,” FORBES reports.
Canada’s legal requirements allow euthanasia for people suffering from serious but nonfatal medical conditions and disabilities. On private forums, doctors and nurses have expressed deep discomfort with ending the lives of vulnerable people whose deaths were avoidable. A Canadian doctor who boasts that she helped kill 400 people through assisted suicide, declares that “loneliness and poverty” are good enough reasons to justify her actions.
“Suicide has gone from illegal to optional,” observes Dr. Vernon Coleman, MB ChB DSc. How soon will euthanasia become compulsory and for whom?”
By December 2022, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) had killed well over 40,000 Canadians.
Photo Credit
Death and dying doesn't have to be difficult -sfchronicle.com
An abridged version of this article has appeared in the Islands Grapevine