Canadian Medical Journal Offers Guidelines for Euthanasia/Organ-Harvesting Non-Terminally Ill Patients
Wesley J. Smith A new Canadian Medical Association Journal article updates recommendations for doctors to apply when euthanizing and organ harvesting non-terminally ill patients. The article was published in the wake of Canadian law now allowing patients who are not dying to ask for euthanasia — called “Track 2” patients in the article. (Track 1 […]
Ethical Arguments Against Coercing Provider Participation in MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) in Ontario, Canada
Travis Carpenter and Lucas Vivas It has historically been a crime in Canada to provide assistance to someone in ending their own life, however, this paradigm was inverted in 2015 when the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruled that restrictions on this practice, within certain defined parameters, violated the right to life, liberty, and security […]
Bioethicists: Euthanasia Okay for ‘Unjust Social Conditions’
Wesley J. Smith Once killing the sufferer becomes a societally acceptable means for ending suffering, there becomes no end to the “suffering” that justifies human termination. We can see this phenomenon most vividly in Canada, because it is happening there more quickly than in most cultures. For example, a recent poll found that 27 percent […]
Assisted Dying in Canada Has Been Captured by a Medical Ideology
Scott Kim Now that the Canadian government has introduced a bill to delay implementing psychiatric MAID – assisted dying for people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness – this is a good time to step back and reflect on how Canada got here. Last week’s release of a joint parliamentary committee’s report on […]
Pain Medicine and Palliative Care as an Alternative to Euthanasia in End-of-life Cancer Care
Michael Erdek Patients suffering from terminal cancer often have pain. Some have advocated euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide as a potential way of alleviating this suffering. Further examination of this topic, however, shows this approach may be essentially utilitarian and fail to consider the inherent value of human life. There has been significant development in recent […]
Canada Releases 2021 Euthanasia Report. More than 10,000 Deaths Representing 3.3% of All Deaths
Alex Schadenberg Health Canada recently released the Third Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2021). The data is gathered from the reports submitted by the medical or nurse practitioners who carried out the euthanasia death. There is no requirement that a third party or neutral person submit the reports to ensure their […]
Canada’s Euthanasia Law is a Moral Outrage
Alex Schadenberg “Canada has the dubious honour of being the global capital of euthanasia. Through its medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme, Canada killed more people with lethal injections last year than any other country on Earth – many of them poor, homeless or hopeless. And soon, from March 2023, lethal injections will be offered […]
Lack of Palliative Care is a Failure in Too Many MaiD Requests
Romayne Gallagher When a person with a failing organ, stroke or other chronic life-limiting disease has persistent suffering that goes untreated, they can become depressed and hopeless. It’s a common pathway to severe distress that can lead people to request Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). This is a medical error. The error is not in […]
