Assisted Death may be a Cruel Death

Assisted Death may be a Cruel Death

by Administrator
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Joel Zivot who is an assistant professor of anesthesiology/critical care at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, was published today in Medpage Today explaining, based on the pharmacology, how an assisted death happens.

I have written on this topic in the past. If Zivot is correct, assisted death may be torturous not peaceful.

In his Op-Ed Zivot writes:

As a Canadian physician and anesthesiologist working in the United States, this debate is of interest to me. I was a witness in these Senate hearings because I am an expert in the opposition to lethal injection, the most common form of execution in the U.S.

… Read More “Assisted Death may be a Cruel Death”
Portugal’s President did not sign euthanasia bill and sent it to the country’s Constitutional court for evaluation.

Portugal’s President did not sign euthanasia bill and sent it to the country’s Constitutional court for evaluation.

by Administrator
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Portuguese parliament passed a euthanasia bill on January 29, a bill that allows euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill but rather suffering from permanent injuries or a grave and incurable illness.


Article about the bill (Link).

Similar to Canada’s euthanasia law, the bill allows euthanasia based on subjective not objective considerations. Even if the “suffering” can be alleviated, euthanasia would be permitted based on whether or not the person considers the treatment acceptable.

The term suffering also includes psychiatric suffering, which means, euthanasia for psychiatric conditions would be permitted when the person asking to be killed considers the treatment options unacceptable.

… Read More “Portugal’s President did not sign euthanasia bill and sent it to the country’s Constitutional court for evaluation.”
Netherlands Child Euthanasia …Gone too far.

Netherlands Child Euthanasia …Gone too far.

by Administrator

Margreet van der Valk: They just killed my mother.

Narrator: Consent to euthanasia is sometimes ignored in the Netherlands.

Margreet: And I said the cause of death, what is the cause of death and she said pneumonia and heart failure, but I thought, I was laying in bed, no it was not, it was that lethal injection you gave her.

Narrator: And in neighboring Belgium, people with disabilities are being targeted.

Lionel Roosemont: We were walking with our child in her wheelchair and we would have people who we do not know, and they would come towards us, and they would ask us, why don’t you have euthanasia with that child.

… Read More “Netherlands Child Euthanasia …Gone too far.”
No to euthanasia for mental illness and incompetent people!

No to euthanasia for mental illness and incompetent people!

by Administrator
Petition to the Political Party Leaders.
 
Sign the petition: No to euthanasia for mental illness and incompetent people! (Link)

Canada legalized euthanasia (MAiD) in June 2016. At that time the legislation was sold to Canadians as a compromise by permitting euthanasia for physical or psychological suffering but requiring that a person’s “natural death be reasonably foreseeable” before they qualified to be killed by lethal injection.

In September 2019, a Quebec Superior court judge, in Truchon, struck down the requirement in the law that a person’s natural death be reasonably foreseeable. The government did not appeal the decision.

… Read More “No to euthanasia for mental illness and incompetent people!”
Legal euthanasia makes killing the norm, not the exception

Legal euthanasia makes killing the norm, not the exception

by Administrator
By Henk Reitsema
Henk Reitsema

Henk Reitsema wrote an insightful article that was published in the Times UK on February 23, 2021. Reitsema is responding to the campaign to legalize euthanasia in Scotland. Reitsema comments on the expansion of euthanasia and the growth in acceptance of other acts that cause death, but are not defined as euthanasia. He writes:

Campaigners plan a new move to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland this year. The Netherlands, which legalised euthanasia in 2001, should offer a cautionary tale. My country expected a fall in backdoor euthanasia and the stopping of incremental extension by pinning down the definitions in law.

… Read More “Legal euthanasia makes killing the norm, not the exception”
Trudeau government agrees to permit euthanasia for mental illness alone.

Trudeau government agrees to permit euthanasia for mental illness alone.

by Administrator

Sign the petition: 

No to euthanasia for mental illness and incompetent people! (Link)

Contact your member of parliament to reject the Senate amendments and Bill C-7. Members of Parliament contact list:  https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/search

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Last week I reported that Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-7, the bill to expand Canada’s (MAiD) euthanasia law, with dangerous amendments that further expands the law.

As bad as Bill C-7 was, the Senate passed five amendments to Bill C-7. The primary amendments were expanding euthanasia to people with mental illness alone (with an 18 month reprieve for the federal government to develop rules) and incompetent people who had requested death in their advanced directive.
… Read More “Trudeau government agrees to permit euthanasia for mental illness alone.”
Wider access to euthanasia will be catastrophic for people with disabilities.

Wider access to euthanasia will be catastrophic for people with disabilities.

by Administrator

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Barbara Kay

An excellent article by Barbara Kay was published in the National Post today titled: Wider access to assisted dying in Canada will be catastrophic for the disabled. Kay is writing about Bill C-7, the bill to expand euthanasia in Canada, that will be voted-on in Canada’s Senate next week.

Kay explains that Bill C-7 is the government’s response to the Quebec Truchon court decision that struck down the requirement in the law that a person’s death be reasonably foreseeable to qualify for euthanasia. She explains how Bill C-7 goes far beyond Truchon.

… Read More “Wider access to euthanasia will be catastrophic for people with disabilities.”
Irish Bishops Decry Bill to Legalize Euthanasia

Irish Bishops Decry Bill to Legalize Euthanasia

by Administrator
HQuality
Medical syringes.

In a Jan. 26 submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, the bishops warned that the bill would normalize suicide and undermine “protections against the non-consensual killing of particularly vulnerable classes of persons.”

This article was originally published in The Daily Register. Click here to read the Original Article

Powered by WPeMatico… Read More “Irish Bishops Decry Bill to Legalize Euthanasia”

Assisted Death may be a Cruel Death

Assisted Death may be a Torturous Death

by Administrator
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Joel Zivot who is an assistant professor of anesthesiology/critical care at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, was published today in Medpage Today explaining, based on the pharmacology, how an assisted death happens.

I have written on this topic in the past. If Zivot is correct, an assisted death is torturous not peaceful.

In his Op-Ed Zivot writes:

As a Canadian physician and anesthesiologist working in the United States, this debate is of interest to me. I was a witness in these Senate hearings because I am an expert in the opposition to lethal injection, the most common form of execution in the U.S.

… Read More “Assisted Death may be a Torturous Death”
A dangerous path: Why expanding access to medical assistance in dying keeps us up at night

A dangerous path: Why expanding access to medical assistance in dying keeps us up at night

by Administrator

This article was published by Menafn.com on February 8, 2021

By Dr Heidi Janz and Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London, Ont.

When a government starts making laws based on the premise that some lives are not worth living, it is setting out on an extremely dangerous path.

That is the path that Bill C-7, the proposed law to expand access to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to people whose death is not imminent, sets Canada on.

This is what keeps us — two MDs and a PhD on wheels — up at night. We each have a different perspective on the dangers of expanding MAiD eligibility to people who are not dying.

… Read More “A dangerous path: Why expanding access to medical assistance in dying keeps us up at night”
Doctors say No to Washington state assisted suicide expansion bill HB 1141.

Doctors say No to Washington state assisted suicide expansion bill HB 1141.

by Administrator

No on Washington state HB 1141,
by Kenneth R. Stevens, Jr., MD,
Professor Emeritus & former Chair Department of Radiation Oncology,
Oregon Health & Science University.
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation, pccef.org

When the citizens of Washington state voted in 2008 in favor of Initiative 1000, Washington’s Death with Dignity Act, they did it with the understanding that there were “safeguards” in the new law.

HB 1141 seeks to remove some of those safeguards.

1) It removes the safeguard that only medical physicians can be both the attending and consulting physicians. It expands qualifications to those with lesser medical expertise.

… Read More “Doctors say No to Washington state assisted suicide expansion bill HB 1141.”
Belgian euthanasia law is broken, says academic study

Belgian euthanasia law is broken, says academic study

by Administrator
This article was published by Mercatornet on February 1, 2021.
Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

Its scope is ever-widening and the safeguards are failing.

E

very once in a while, a bioethics article appears which is so powerful an indictment of injustice that it sends shivers up the spines of its readers. In 1949 Leo Alexander published “Medical Science under Dictatorship” in the New England Journal of Medicine, about the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors. In 1966 Henry K. Beecher published “Ethics and Clinical Research”, also in the NEJM, whose bland title belied its searing message about ethical catastrophes in contemporary American medicine.
… Read More “Belgian euthanasia law is broken, says academic study”
Tell Portugal’s President to veto the euthanasia bill.

Tell Portugal’s President to veto the euthanasia bill.

by Administrator

On Friday, January 29, the Portugal Parliament legalized euthanasia. President Marcelo de Sousa can veto the bill (Article about the bill).

Link to send your message to President de Sousa. https://www.presidencia.pt/?action=3

President Marcelo de Sousa

Email: belem@presidencia.pt

Dear President Marcelo de Sousa

I urge you to veto the euthanasia bill that recently passed in the Portuguese Parliament.

Euthanasia is a form of homicide. It allows medical practitioners to lethally inject a patient upon request.

… Read More “Tell Portugal’s President to veto the euthanasia bill.”
UN Office of Human Rights condemns euthanasia for people with disabilities

UN Office of Human Rights condemns euthanasia for people with disabilities

by Administrator

Disability rights organizations are praising the United Nations (UN) Office of Human Rights for speaking out against disability-based euthanasia. Three UN experts issued a joint statement this week in response to numerous nations’ decision to allow physician-assisted suicide for people with disabilities, including people with old age.

The experts, Gerard Quinn, Olivier De Schutter, and Claudia Mahler, expressed concern about this deadly trend and said it should be brought to an end. “We all accept that it could never be a well-reasoned decision for a person belonging to any other protected group — be it a racial minority, gender or sexual minorities — to end their lives because they experience suffering on account of their status,” read the statement.

… Read More “UN Office of Human Rights condemns euthanasia for people with disabilities”
Let’s offer humane and dignified living not lethal injection

Let’s offer humane and dignified living not lethal injection

by Administrator

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Psychiatrist, Dr Sephora Tang, and lawyer, Dylan McGuinty Jr, were published by the Ottawa Citizen on February 3, 2021, urging Canada to focus on humane and dignified living before offering a lethal injection.

Tang and McGuinty explain how Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD) regime and it’s expansion through Bill C-7 is changing healthcare and how this affects vulnerable Canadians:

Poor mental health, coupled with the stress of insufficient financial, personal and/or social supports, often leads to death wishes in people overwhelmed by their circumstances. Current pressure to remove the exclusion of mental illness as a sole eligibility criterion in Bill C-7 would make suicide prevention methods ineffective for individuals over the age of 18 who are contemplating suicide and suffering solely from psychological distress.

… Read More “Let’s offer humane and dignified living not lethal injection”
Physicians should not be forced to make referrals for (MAiD) euthanasia.

Physicians should not be forced to make referrals for (MAiD) euthanasia.

by Administrator
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr’s Bouchard, Coelho and Herx have written an important article that was published in the Ottawa Citizen today. Bouchard, Coelho and Herx write that physicians should not be forced to make referrals for euthanasia. Now that Bill C-7, if passed, will allow people who are not terminally ill to die by euthanasia, pressure to refer for euthanasia needs to stop. Link to the original article in the Ottawa Citizen.

Bill C-7, passed by the House of Commons and now in front of a Senate committee, raises even more ethical challenges than the original legislation.

… Read More “Physicians should not be forced to make referrals for (MAiD) euthanasia.”
Netherlands Euthanized Over 6,300 Patients in 2019, And That Number May be Too Low

Netherlands Euthanized Over 6,300 Patients in 2019, And That Number May be Too Low

by Administrator

There is a seven-fold unexplained variation in rates of euthanasia across The Netherlands, reveals an analysis of health insurance claims data, published online in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.

It’s not clear if these differences relate to underuse, overuse, or even misuse, say the researchers.

Official data show that the number of euthanasia cases has risen more or less continuously since 2006, reaching 6,361 in 2019. These cases make up just a small proportion of all deaths, but they have doubled from just under 2% in 2002 to just over 4% in 2019.

To explore this further, the researchers analysed national insurance data, covering all healthcare claims for the 12 months preceding the deaths of Dutch residents between 2013 and 2017.

… Read More “Netherlands Euthanized Over 6,300 Patients in 2019, And That Number May be Too Low”
Disability is not a reason to sanction euthanasia.

Disability is not a reason to sanction euthanasia.

by Administrator

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

United Nations experts published a press release yesterday expressing alarm at a growing trend of nations enacting legislation enabling access to medically assisted dying based largely on having a disability or disabling conditions, including old age (Link to the Press Release).

The timing of this statement should cause the Canadian government to rewrite Bill C-7, which expands Canada’s euthanasia law by eliminating the terminal illness requirement and permitting euthanasia for people with chronic or conditions related to disability.

In April 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities expressed concern about Canada’s euthanasia law (Link). 

… Read More “Disability is not a reason to sanction euthanasia.”
Australian ‘Dr. Death’ helps healthy Dutch people to take their own lives

Australian ‘Dr. Death’ helps healthy Dutch people to take their own lives

by Administrator

Overall, the Netherlands has shockingly permissive laws when it comes to euthanasia. Children and people with mental illnesses can be legally killed, and doctors recently received permission to forcibly euthanize dementia patients as well. Over a quarter of all deaths in the country are now induced, and some have said they expect euthanasia deaths to double in the next decade. Given these disturbing facts, one would think there is no one who believes euthanasia isn’t easily accessible. But one notorious Australian doctor is looking to help Dutch citizens get around the very few restrictions on assisted suicide.

Philip Nitschke, known as “Dr.

… Read More “Australian ‘Dr. Death’ helps healthy Dutch people to take their own lives”
Portugal to vote on euthanasia bill on January 29. No terminal illness requirement.

Portugal to vote on euthanasia bill on January 29. No terminal illness requirement.

by Administrator

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Portugal parliament is set to vote on a euthanasia bill on January 29, a bill that allows euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill but rather suffering from permanent injuries or a grave and incurable illness. 

Similar to Canada’s euthanasia law, the bill allows euthanasia based on subjective not objective considerations. Even if the “suffering” can be alleviated, euthanasia would be permitted based on whether or not the person considers the treatment acceptable. 

The term suffering also includes psychiatric suffering, which means, euthanasia for psychiatric conditions would be permitted when the person asking to be killed considers the treatment options unacceptable.

… Read More “Portugal to vote on euthanasia bill on January 29. No terminal illness requirement.”
Euthanasia deaths increase by one third in Ontario from 2019 to 2020

Euthanasia deaths increase by one third in Ontario from 2019 to 2020

by Administrator

This article was published by the Australian Care Alliance on January 19, 2020.

Reported deaths by euthanasia in Ontario jumped by one third (32.95%) from 1789 in 2019 to 2378 in 2020 according to statistics published by the Office of the Chief Coroner. 

Article: Euthanasia deaths continue to increase in Canada (Link).

There have been 6694 reported cases of euthanasia (and just 2 of assistance to suicide) in Ontario since it became legal throughout Canada on 17 June 2016. 

The youngest person to die by lethal injection in Ontario was 20 years of age and the oldest was 106 years old.

… Read More “Euthanasia deaths increase by one third in Ontario from 2019 to 2020”
Reader’s Digest Canada Pushes Euthanasia, Ignores Hospice

Reader’s Digest Canada Pushes Euthanasia, Ignores Hospice

by Administrator

The push is on in Canada to normalize euthanasia as the best way to die — to save money and emotional turmoil. How hard is the push? Reader’s Digest Canada — no less — has published a guide to end-of-life planning that pushes euthanasia and doesn’t even mention hospice.

The guide advises readers to “pick the right time” to die, i.e., be euthanized — euphemistically known as “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). From “The Ultimate Guide to End of Life Planning”:

A scheduled death can allow people to say goodbye in the way they want. According to Helen Long, a MAID is often like a celebration of life—except the guest of honour gets to be there.

… Read More “Reader’s Digest Canada Pushes Euthanasia, Ignores Hospice”
Euthanasia Bill C-7: A palliative care pioneer doctor responds.

Euthanasia Bill C-7: A palliative care pioneer doctor responds.

by Administrator
By Dr. Sydney Grant

The headline reads “Bill C-7 removes “reasonably foreseeable death” as a requirement for MAID” – where one’s death had to be foreseeable 4 years before, MAID (Medical Aid in Dying) or euthanasia resulted from a law passed in 2016 called Bill C-14, there was a new law. 

Bill C-7 resulted from Justice Baudouin of Quebec’s Superior Court striking down the federal prohibition on physician-assisted dying arguing that the old law violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom by only allowing MAiD for people whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable and therefore was unconstitutional. Hard to believe but Quebec was protesting that since it was only those who were about to die that “benefited” from this law and that was unconstitutional.
… Read More “Euthanasia Bill C-7: A palliative care pioneer doctor responds.”
Canadian hospice to be shuttered for refusing to participate in euthanasia

Canadian hospice to be shuttered for refusing to participate in euthanasia

by Administrator

(National Review) I have written here before about Delta Hospice in British Columbia, which has been under unremitting pressure by the government of the province — including a funding cutoff — only because it refuses to participate in euthanasia. It is now being forced to lay off clinical workers and faces eviction. From the press release:

The board of DHS deeply regrets being compelled to take this action. Tragically, as the video and the attached background document make clear, we have been left no other choice due to the Fraser Health Authority canceling our service agreement and 35-year lease.

… Read More “Canadian hospice to be shuttered for refusing to participate in euthanasia”