Canadian doctor considers euthanasia the best work she has done.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

British actress, comedian and disability rights activist, Liz Carr, produced a BBC documentary titled - Better off Dead? that was first aired on May 14. Carr is best known for her role as Clarissa Mullery on the BBC series Silent Witness.

One of the scenes in the Better off Dead? documentary features Carr interviewing Canadian euthanasia doctor, Ellen Wiebe. (Link to the scene)

David Kraydon wrote an article that was published in The Post Millennial on October 9 concerning Carr's documentary. Carr asks her about euthanasia and Wiebe responds:

“I love my job. You know, I always loved being a doctor and I delivered over a thousand babies, and I took care of families, but this is the very best work I've ever done in the last seven years. And people ask me why? And I think, well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody's more grateful than my patients now and their families.”

Ellen Wiebe laughing

Carr wonders if Wiebe is concerned that Canada’s euthanasia program will go too far. Kraydon writes that Wiebe shuts down that debate by stating:

“What you're saying is to protect what you consider vulnerable people. You are condemning others to unbearable suffering, unbearable suffering, and I am so glad, so glad that I'm Canadian and that we have this law so that people can choose that or not choose that, but to say that somebody has to suffer like that is simply cruel,”

Better off Dead? viewers were shocked when Wiebe giggled while talking about euthanasia.

Professor Christopher Lyon told National Post writer Sharon Kirkey that:

“Some providers have counts in the hundreds — this isn’t normal, for any occupation,” he said. “Even members of the military at war do not typically kill that frequently. I think that’s a question that we’ve not really ever asked.”

Lyon recently published an article concerning health-care serial killers and Canada's euthanasia law.

Ellen Wiebe may be Canada's most prolific euthanasia doctor having killed hundreds. 

Liz Carr's Better off Dead? is available for you to watch on youtube (youtube link).

Is Medical Assistance in Dying Part of Palliative Care?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Harvey Chochinov and Dr Joseph Fins have written an excellent article that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on October 8 titled: Is Medical Assistance in Dying Part of Palliative Care?

The authors are actually asking the question whether or not MAiD, better known as euthanasia, is a part of medical treatment and therefore can be part of palliative care. The problem is that in many jurisdictions, where it is legal, MAiD is already considered as part of palliative care.

The authors begin the article by stating that most national palliative care organizations, including the Canadian Palliative Care Association, believe that MAiD does not fall within the practise of palliative care. The authors therefore determine the purpose of this article is:

to determine whether MAID is part of palliative care, based on characteristics embedded within the practice of medicine.

Dr Harvey Chochinov

The first question the authors examine is whether or not MAiD is part of medicine? The authors examine this question based on the four canons of therapy as defined by Thomas et al. which are: restoration, means-end proportionality, parsimony and discretion.

Concerning restorative measures the authors conclude:

It is hard to conceive of MAID as restorative because the very act makes any return impossible.

Concerning means-end proportionality, the authors conclude:

It is difficult to regard death as “well-fitted” because nonexistence negates alternative means to address pain. Death cannot be titrated and trialed; hence, it does not qualify as a therapeutic, which means its pursuit resides outside the realm of medicine.

Concerning parsimony, the authors conclude:

This tailoring of a therapy to a specific condition, drawing on evidence based guidelines, is violated under MAID, where patient preference effectively dictates practice. By way of example, Canadians seeking MAID are under no obligation to try other treatments they deem unacceptable. In those instances, physicians may have to dispense with parsimony—despite their clinical judgment pointing toward other options—yielding to the patient’s intent on receiving MAID.

Dr Joseph Fins

Concerning discretion, the authors conclude:

Discretion “counsels that an awareness of the limits of medical knowledge and practice should guide all treatment decisions.” Since MAID was launched in Canada, eligibility has broadened from those whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable, to individuals who are not dying but living with disability; with consideration now being given to mental illness, children, and those anticipating the loss of mental capacity. Although some may see this as affirming individual autonomy, ethicist Paul Ramsey reminds us that physicians must recognize that the function of medicine is not to relieve the human condition of the human condition.

The authors then examine the Patient-Physician Relationship and conclude:

MAID undermines the patient-physician relationship by violating the principle of nonabandonment, even when it is well intended. At the height of patients’ distress, MAID truncates care and eliminates the possibility of healing. This distinguishes it from palliative medicine, which embraces patient and family at life’s end with fidelity and relationality extending into bereavement care for survivors.

The authors then MAiD, Hope and Palliative care and conclude:

It is impossible to sustain this therapeutic stance when assessing a patient’s readiness for MAID. The former (palliative care) entails holistic medical care, whereas the latter shifts to a legalistic paradigm centered on determining eligibility for MAID.

The authors then examine MAiD in relation to policy considerations and state:

The policy arguments separating MAID and palliative care are rooted in the notion that palliative care affirms life, regards dying as a normal process, and is committed to “neither hasten nor postpone death.” Organizations representing palliative care have been resolute in asserting that MAID falls beyond their mandate.

Chochinov and Fins have provided excellent arguments and prove that MAiD is not a medical treatment and thus it cannot be part of palliative care.

Nonetheless, in many jurisdictions, including Canada, MAiD is administered as if it is part of palliative care. One problem is that health care administrators, within the government and on a regional basis, have implemented euthanasia, which is the killing of a patient upon request, as if it were medical treatment.

The goal of medical researchers, such as Chochinov and Fins, must be to convince the medical administrators that MAiD is not a part of medicine and, if legal, it needs to be separated from services that actually constitute medical treatment, such as palliative care.

UK Labour MP's are divided on assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A private members bill to legalize assisted suicide in the UK, that is being sponsored by Kim Leadbeater (Labour MP) is scheduled to be released on October 16 and is being fast-tracked by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to enable it to have a second reading vote before Christmas.

Prime Minister Starmer, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, is a long-time promoter of assisted suicide. During the election Starmer promised that he would introduce a bill and allow a free-vote on assisted suicide. The July 4 election resulted in the Labour Party winning a massive majority with 411 out of 650 parliamentary seats.

The Daily Mail reported that Starmer's Labour MP's are divided on the issue of assisted suicide. An article by Glen Owen and Brendan Carlin reported that, among others, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood oppose assisted suicide. The authors report:

A Labour source said: 'The wheels are turning. It has been made clear to the MPs at the top of the ballot that the PM backs a change in the law.'

However, Sir Keir's Cabinet is split on the issue. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said: 'I don't intend to support it... I know some MPs who support this issue think, 'For God's sake, we're not a nation of granny killers, what's wrong with you'… [But] once you cross that line, you've crossed it forever. If it becomes the norm that at a certain age or with certain diseases, you are now a bit of a burden… that's a really dangerous position.'

And Health Secretary Wes Streeting has declared himself 'conflicted' on the issue, citing the poor state of end-of-life care and warning that the 'right protections' were needed to make sure people don't 'take their own life thinking they were a burden on others'.

He explained he was 'deeply uncomfortable' about the practical aspects of changing the law, saying: 'Candidly, when I think about this question of being a burden, I do not think that palliative care, end-of-life care in this country, is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose, without being coerced by the lack of support available.'

Faith Ridler reported for Sky News (UK) on September 16, 2024 that:

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is 'sceptical' of the case for assisted dying for 'quite personal' reasons. Ridler reported that during an interview with Sky News' deputy political editor Sam Coates, Davey stated that MP's must deeply and carefully listen to all sides of the debate, considering it's outcome. Davey also urged MP's not to rush a vote on assisted suicide.

The four candidates vying to become the leader of the Conservative Party oppose assisted suicide.

More than half of the MP's elected in the last UK election are new. People who oppose assisted suicide need to meet with their MP's and urge them to vote no to the Leadbeater assisted suicide bill.

Assisted Suicide destroys Hope.

This opinion article was published by the Fayette Tribune on October 10, 2024

Vote YES on West Virginia Amendment 1 for protection from assisted suicide (Link).

Pat McGeehan

By Pat McGeehan

For every one suicide in our country, there are an estimated 25 non-fatal suicide attempts. (McIntosh, J.L. (for the American Association of Suicidology). (2009). U.S.A. suicide 2006: Official final data. Washington, DC: American Association of Suicidology, dated April 19, 2009, downloaded from http://www.suicidology.org.)

The vast majority of people who survive suicide do not attempt to kill themselves again: “nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive will not go on to die by suicide at a later date.” (Owens D, Horrocks J, and House A. Fatal and non-fatal repetition of self-harm: systematic review. British Journal of Psychiatry. 2002;181:193-199. Emphasis added.)

Suicide attempts don’t simply seek out death. They give expression to misery. They cry out for help. They seek an end, not to life, but to suffering, shame, and depression. By bringing these buried miseries into the light, suicide attempts often motivate the loving intervention of family, friends, neighbors, and the medical community. In the vast majority of suicide attempts, it is life, and not death, that has the final word.

It is baseless and unintelligent to imagine that an attempt at medically-assisted suicide is not as much a cry for help as any other suicide attempt. When a loved one expresses a desire to kill themselves, we are counseled to restrict their access to “lethal means” — to hide medication and move firearms out of the house. But, in places like California, if that same loved one would kill themselves by medically-assisted suicide, an incredibly “lethal means” — a cocktail of poisons, sedatives, and painkillers known as DDMA or DDMP — is mailed to their home.

Unlike every other form of suicide — in which the desire to live and the desire to die are so obviously at war in the individual — medically-assisted suicide is presumed to be a rational, unchanging choice. This is foolish. Consider Michael Freeman, whose story was recorded by the National Council on Disability:

At age 62, Michael Freeland had a 43-year medical history of significant depression and suicide attempts. After receiving a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, he requested assisted suicide. Dr. Peter Reagan, an assisted suicide advocate who was associated with the group Compassion in Dying (later renamed Compassion & Choices), a leading pro-assisted suicide organization, prescribed lethal drugs to Michael Freeland...Freeland then made a telephone call to Physicians for Compassionate Care (PCC), a medical group dedicated to improving the care of seriously ill people without resorting to assisted suicide. The call was answered by a PCC volunteer who was trained in counseling people with serious illness. With encouragement from a doctor recommended by PCC, Freeland underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which alleviated his cancer symptoms significantly. PCC volunteers arranged for him to receive adequate pain care, other appropriate medication, and 24-hour attendant services. A PCC volunteer stayed in touch with him to offer encouragement, as did some old friends, who began to visit him daily. He also received assistance to resolve other health and personal problems. With this multifaceted assistance, his suffering abated, as did his wish to take lethal drugs. He was able to fully reconcile with his daughter, who had been estranged from him during certain periods. In the end, he lived 2 years post-diagnosis; he eventually died of natural causes. (“The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws: Part of the Bioethics and Disability Series” by The National Council on Disability, October 9, 2019)

Michael’s story shows that the attempt at medically-assisted suicide follows the same path as other suicide attempts: An ambivalent desire that does not end in death but in the intervention of friends and caregivers who reaffirm that life is worth living. But what if Michael’s desire to live became conscious and decisive, not after the appointment prescribing him poison pills, but after swallowing them?

Within suicide states, physicians help sick people to kill themselves in a way that ensures that their suicide attempt will not be the occasion of any positive, life-affirming change. The poisons commonly used in medically-assisted suicides are maximally lethal. Survival is not an option. Through the intervention of bad laws and spineless medical practitioners, suicide attempts “become” what they rarely otherwise are: Irreversible decisions with no other goal besides death.

...It is easy to imagine that no one regrets medically-assisted suicide — its victims are all dead! It is easy to imagine that medically-assisted suicide is an unchanging and unambivalent decision rather than a cry for help — suicide states like Oregon are not required to keep any record of the time between the ingestion of poison pills and death (Worthington A, Finlay I, Regnard C. Efficacy and safety of drugs used for ‘assisted dying.’ Br Med Bull. 2022 Jul 9;142(1):15-22. doi: 10.1093/bmb/ldac009. PMID: 35512347), records concerning complications are quickly destroyed, and “this destruction of essential data makes it impossible to carry out retrospective analysis of Oregon’s assisted deaths” (Regnard C, Worthington A, Finlay I, Oregon Death with Dignity Act access: 25 year analysis BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care Published Online First: 03 October 2023. doi: 10.1136/spcare-2023-004292).

Likewise, it is easy to imagine that those who attempt medically-assisted suicide are clear-headed individuals, rather than people suffering underlying causes of hopelessness and neglect. The trend, in suicide states, is to meet the request for suicide with great haste (Oregon has seen “a reduction in the length of the physician-patient relationship from 18 weeks in 2010 to 5 weeks in 2022”), to refer those requesting suicide to a willing physician, and decidedly not to investigate the possibility that the person requesting medically-assisted suicide might be depressed — “the proportion referred for psychiatric assessment remains low (1%)” (Ibid). Unwilling to listen to a cry for help, medical practitioners in suicide states are increasingly unable to recognize it when it is made in the form of a request for medically-assisted suicide.

We’re not like that in West Virginia. Here, when the sick, disabled, or ill express a desire to kill themselves, we do not ignore everything we know about suicide and prescribe them poison any more than we hand them a loaded gun. We help. Our mothers and fathers can trust a physician in West Virginia with what afflictions and depressions trouble them, and their physician will not repay their trust by recommending their death. This is a confidence we cannot take for granted. Without vigorously rejecting medically-assisted suicide, the future chosen by Canada — where medically-assisted suicide is the fifth leading cause of death — could well become our own.

That’s why it is vital to vote for Amendment One this November. It protects our state from medically-assisted suicide and the culture of indifference and carelessness that it promotes. It affirms the goodness of suicide prevention. And it sends a clear and confident message that West Virginia is not a state of despair, but of hope.

Pat McGeehan is a six-term state delegate from Hancock County. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, he serves as the dean of a private school in the Northern Panhandle. Pat resides with his daughter Kennedy in Chester.

Insight into The Cautionary Tale of Canada's Euthanasia Regime

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Alexander Raikin

On October 9, 2024, The European Conservative published an interview by Jonathon Van Maren with Alexander Raikin. Raikin has recently published a research article titled: The Rise of Euthanasia in Canada: From Exceptional to Routine.

First question: In your view, why did Canada’s euthanasia regime go off the rails much sooner than other jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia/assisted suicide? Raikin Responds:

The premise of your question is interesting. When the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized euthanasia, it was based on the argument of a right to life—that those who would die from euthanasia would have otherwise died from suicide. It was a lesser evil. Yet every day in 2022, on average, Canadian physicians and nurses ended the lives of more than 36 people. It is now quadruple the official suicide rate.

In an ordinary country, in an ordinary time, this would be considered a national crisis: a royal commission would be called and weekly press conferences by worried government officials would dominate the news cycle, especially if the victims were all people with disabilities and the elderly. Instead, we now have cognitive dissonance of a national variety. News media credulously write about the horror of a Canadian man selling suicide kits online—and then report almost monthly on how a state-sanctioned, state-funded, and state-administered death from euthanasia is “beautiful.” Or how the lethal injection of prisoners in the U.S. is cruel and unusual, unless a prisoner denied for parole in Canada asks for a lethal injection instead.

This dissonance is reflected in what our public healthcare system funds. The median wait time for a CT scan in Canada was 66 days in 2023. A government-funded suicide, meanwhile? Only 11 days in 2022. I don’t know any elective medical procedure in Canada that is as rushed as euthanasia.

Canada is, of course, not the only jurisdiction with horror stories of what happens when we selectively decriminalize murder and assisted suicide by physicians and nurses. Every jurisdiction that has legalized permissive euthanasia or assisted suicide has seen wrongful deaths that shouldn’t have happened. It is as true in the Netherlands and Belgium as it is in Switzerland or Oregon. I could spend the rest of my life counting these cases: consider, for instance, the dozens of reported cases of euthanasia based on autism or an eating disorder that sparked some worldwide interest. The Swiss Medical Association had to issue a statement that suicide “for healthy persons is not medically and ethically justifiable.” Yet, even in a limited assisted suicide program which requires a terminal diagnosis with less than six months of natural life, we have seen the same excesses. In Washington state, according to the physicians responsible for ending their patients’ lives, 10% of all assisted suicides in 2022 were because their patients were concerned with “financial implications of treatment.” Not one media account reported on it.

But Canada surpasses all these jurisdictions, at least in how quickly we’ve seen the same stories. It was in the first hundred cases of euthanasia in Ontario, for instance, that we saw anorexia as a qualifying condition for euthanasia. Not a single newspaper reported on that either. There is no innate reason for why Canada’s euthanasia program has turned to be such a catastrophic failure in terms of human rights, especially for the people that the Supreme Court of Canada described as “vulnerable persons” who must be protected. On paper, Canada should have one of the strictest euthanasia programs in the world: the eligibility criteria and the safeguards are written as exemptions—in the Criminal Code—from homicide and aiding suicide. If a physician or a nurse practitioner breaks any provision, they would not be protected by these exemptions and could therefore face up to 14 years in prison. That hasn’t happened.

I have some speculations about why Canada’s euthanasia program has turned into a global canary in the coal mine for permissive euthanasia. It’s not because physicians or nurses in Canada are any more diabolical than in other jurisdictions—the vast majority have no interest in killing their patients, even as it becomes a surefire route for a promotion and a leadership position. The irony, of course, is that the exact physicians you don’t want to be involved in ending their patients’ lives are those who are most interested to do so.

I think the more likely reason is because of how Canada was forced to decriminalize euthanasia by the courts. Leon Kass warned that a ‘right to die’ invariably becomes a ‘duty to die.’ Once the Supreme Court of Canada enshrined this right much more forcefully than in other jurisdictions, the Criminal Code protections became moot—the relationship between physicians and their patients were ruptured. If it is a legal right to die, then there is no purpose for anyone else to be involved in this decision, even if it is a cop or a judge. No one else is in that room. It means that a physician and a nurse—who self-selected to reject their roles as healers—can break as many rules as they want, or pressure their patients to die from euthanasia.

It’s not a direct pressure, of course. It is more subtle: if you are suffering, why not be treated by this painless, ‘100% effective’ medical treatment? You are dying anyhow, even if it is a year or four decades from now, and other medical treatments are months away. Why not die? You feel in any rate like a burden to society, to your family, and to me, your caregiver. That is not a hypothetical: according to ‘MAID providers’ (their preferred description), over a third of their patients expressed that as at least one of their reasons to die.

Question 2: Your reporting has uncovered many disturbing aspects of Canada’s MAID system. What are some aspects of the way MAID has been implemented that would (or should) shock people?

Let’s start with something I found today. The Government of Canada created a website to tell physicians and nurse practitioners how to interpret its euthanasia legislation. It states, quite clearly, “Provinces and territories may create further policies and standards with respect to MAID. However, they cannot permit actions that the Criminal Code prohibits.”

Later this month, Quebec is set to unilaterally permit actions that the Criminal Code prohibits—it will allow people to sign an “advanced directive” for a clinician to end their life in the future when they lack the capacity to consent to their death. Let’s be clear what this means: physicians will have to approach a person with dementia, confused and unaware of what is happening, possibly emotional, and then restrain them and end their life. What if these patients changed their mind, maybe regained lucidity for a time, or learned to live a meaningful life with their condition? It wouldn’t matter. It is a murder warrant. One doesn’t have to go as far to read John Locke to know the virtue of why common law has made it so that no one can consent to their own death or harm. The idea that this can ever be made ‘safe’ is wrong.

Yet the truth of the matter is that Canada has already and quietly allowed a version of this. For National Review, I wrote a cover story last year about how Canada removed the requirement for final consent before a death from euthanasia, if a patient enters in a written agreement with one of their two MAID assessors. The form doesn’t need to be signed, and no one else needs to know about it. The exception is that, if a patient shows any verbal or physical signs of “refusal or resistance” to their death, then the euthanasia cannot proceed. MAID providers found and laughed about a loophole instead: they first sedated the patient who “is now delirious, shouting, pulling their arm away as one tries to insert the IV to provide MAID.” There can be no resistance for euthanasia if the patient is first sedated. These physicians then discussed with a bioethicist on the value of having this procedure potentially done away from the family of the deceased, because it would otherwise be distressful.

There are too many stories of abuse in Canada’s MAID program. I wrote about a suicide attempt that failed and then was ‘completed’ through MAID, even though a prominent supporter of MAID believed that it was potentially illegal. I’m writing a story right now on the Criminal Code violations of MAID. But these concerns were known virtually from the beginning of Canada’s euthanasia program. The Office of the Correctional Investigator said, in 2019, “There is no legal or administrative mechanism for ensuring accountability or transparency for MAiD in federal corrections.” Nothing was done. Yet think about what this statement means. It means that the MAID process, in itself, has no legal or administrative mechanisms to keep even the most watched people in our society safe. The federal government has explicitly excluded itself from any oversight role for a policy it created and a criminal law that it is meant to enforce.

Question 3: In your view, why have so many non-religious voices—suicide prevention advocates and disability rights activists—been ignored by the government and groups like Dying With Dignity?

Well, that the government ignores certain groups is not exactly controversial. But I think these groups are ignored not just because they lack a large lobbying purse or political power.

My theory—and I would prefer if I were wrong—is because these non-religious groups sound too much like religious groups. They both rely on an unprovable and therefore uncontestable notion of equality. Your next question asks me about my views on the lawsuit filed by disability organizations in Canada, which claims that Canada’s euthanasia program for people with disabilities who are not terminally ill is discriminatory and unconstitutional. I was listening to their first press conference last week. Heather Walkus, the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, Canada’s oldest disability organization, said at the press conference that “CCD will always fight for life.” Fight for life? In 2024? When was the last time that you heard those words from any Canadian or American NGO, let alone a progressive organization—or a religious group nationally in Canada?

Suicide prevention advocates, mental health professionals, disability rights activists: virtually all of them are opposed to the idea that certain lives are less worthy of living. The corollary is that each life has an inherent dignity by virtue of being alive. Call it anti-ableism or a culture of life, imago Dei or article 10 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We either believe that disabilities do not make a person less worthy of dignity and life, no matter how severe or life-altering, or we do not. Either we believe that human life is sacrosanct, or else that it is disposable.

A government that decriminalizes suicide and murder for only some people is fundamentally unjust. If it is true, as argued Lord Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, the late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, “The value of human life is infinite and beyond measure,” then it logically means that “Any part of life—even if only an hour or a second—is of precisely the same worth as seventy years of it, just as any fraction of infinity, being indivisible, remains infinite.” That certainly doesn’t mean that a person who is dying and in pain must suffer: we have developed, even if we don’t fund it adequately, the most advanced form of palliative care, and dual intent for palliative medicine to treat suffering that shortens life is almost universally accepted in medicine and among faith groups. But to cross that line, to treat a patient’s suffering by ending the patient, is the difference between healthcare and deathcare.

I spoke to someone whose sister died from MAID. She had a non-terminal illness, and should therefore not have been eligible for MAID, at least according to the law at the time (in 2021, Canada expanded euthanasia to non-terminal illnesses and disabilities). He told me that, if his sister would have been on the side of a bridge, he wouldn’t have pushed her. But her MAID assessor believed otherwise. His sister couldn’t find a medical treatment option for her in Canada—besides euthanasia.

Question 4: What is your view of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge filed in Ontario Superior Court by a coalition of disability groups and two affected individuals?

It is the start of litigation. It won’t be the end. If a law values some lives as less worthy of living than other lives—be it on the basis of disability, age, or identity—then that law is unjust. There’s a joke in Futurama of a suicide pod in the future where you must pay a nickel. It’s not a joke in Canada. When I lived in Canada, I needed to pay for my drug prescriptions. But MAID is free, always free. The financial and moral costs are paid for by society.

At this point, we need to put some limits on MAID legislation. Even by disability organizations simply launching a lawsuit, it is enough to say to people with disabilities across Canada that they matter, that their lives are worth living, and that simply having a disability is no good reason for suicide. It was a message that, a decade ago, healthcare practitioners used to say to their patients. Now it is disability organizations that are quite literally collecting names of their dead.

Question 5: How do you see this debate unfolding over the next several years? Can the expansion of the euthanasia regime be stopped?

The year is 1919. A group of scientists and physicians claim that using the scientific method and a rational approach, physicians can objectively decide which people would benefit from sterilization and which would not. About a dozen and a half states in the U.S. enacted this practice against the consent of the individual.

In Canada, it is 1928. Despite eugenics originating in the United Kingdom, the only part of the British Empire that legalized forced sterilization was in Canada. In Alberta, where most of these procedures happened, it was at first voluntary and in front of a four-member panel with at least two physicians. Then, in 1937, consent was no longer required.

The arguments for eugenic sterilization and euthanasia are surprisingly similar, partly because, as Ian Dowbiggin demonstrated in his book A Merciful End, these arguments were made by the same people. In both cases, it was pushed through by physicians who believed they were acting in their patients’ interest. In both cases, an objective rubric was meant to apply to decide which patients would be suitable for treatment and which would not. In both cases, it was supported by large majorities and the cultural elite—for a time.

As a society, we haven’t gotten over the role of eugenics. As long as we treat disabilities as a fate worse than death, we remain in the grasps of this dying ideology. Today, even bringing up eugenics in the context of permissive euthanasia is seen to be impolite (and a cancellable offense, as Dr. Harvey Schipper found when he was forced to step aside from a working group on advance requests—the same issue that Quebec is sliding into this month).

Yet eugenics is a dying ideology, at least outside of X. Those who effectively support it are forced to argue for it indirectly. As one prominent bioethicist and supporter of euthanasia suggested, we need infanticide because some babies become disabled through birth. It is a horrific opinion, one that, as G.K. Chesterton described in his Eugenics and Other Evils, could only be sustained through “terrorism by tenth-rate professors.”

We do not need to vacillate on what is right and wrong. Everyone has a right to life, and the experiment in saving life through legalizing some suicides has been an unequivocal disaster. In a generation, or maybe sooner, we will be speaking of euthanasia the same way that we speak of forced sterilization.

Rosina Kamis

Question 6: In your reporting, what story or stories have stuck with you the most?

Every few months, I think about Rosina Kamis. For my reporting in The New Atlantis, through the executor of her estate, I went through her entire email account and her Google Drive. “I think if more people cared about me,” she wrote in an email, “I might be able to handle the suffering caused by my physical illnesses alone.” To her two dozen subscribers on YouTube, she said, “Sometimes all the pain will go away just by having another human being here.” Even without a terminal illness, she was instead given a state-administered euthanasia—the exact condition that disability organizations in Canada are currently contesting.

The other story that struck me the most is how ghoulish proponents of euthanasia have been in promoting euthanasia for Indigenous people. Indigenous Disability Canada is one of the parties in the Track 2 lawsuit, and I hope they will include some of the evidence that I wrote about in National Review. At the 2018 annual convention for the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, just two years after legalization of MAID, the physicians and nurses tasked with euthanasia advocated expanding MAID to Indigenous children “because they’re closest to the ancestors.” Even then, MAID providers were surprisingly tolerant of euthanizing “a First Nation patient” whose suffering was exasperated “due to a life lived in poverty.” These MAID providers then suggested that “as soon as a patient tells me their suffering is enough, whether I like it, that is their situation and their context.” Note the answer: try to get their basic needs met, try to fix the system, but above all else, don’t forget to kill a patient suffering from poverty. It’s the only right thing to do, at least in Canada.

Alexander Raikin has been covering Canada’s euthanasia regime for years and has consistently broken stories that other journalists missed (or ignored). His work on euthanasia and assisted suicide has been cited by The Atlantic and the New York Times and has been featured in cover stories for National Review and The New Atlantis.

The UK will soon debate assisted suicide. Canada's euthanasia regime should create caution.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On October 9, 2024, The European Conservative published an interview by Jonathon Van Maren with Alexander Raikin. Raikin has recently published a research article titled: The Rise of Euthanasia in Canada: From Exceptional to Routine. Van Maren begins the  article by commentary on the fact that an assisted suicide bill will soon be introduced in the UK.

I recently completed a speaking tour in the UK to awaken people to the reality of Canada's euthanasia experience. Van Maren writes in relation to the upcoming UK assisted suicide bill:

...Keir Starmer, is planning to fast-track a bill legalizing assisted suicide, telling the BBC on October 4 that he is “pleased” to be able to do so. Euthanasia activists have been waiting for this moment and are ramping up their campaigns. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater wrote an editorial for the Guardian in which she stated, with admirable honesty: “Life is precious. But so is choice.” She makes it clear—although without moral clarity—that between life and choice, we must always pick choice. 

Starmer has promised to allot extra time to enable Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill to be debated and likely receive a second reading vote before Christmas. Van Maren continues:

Wes Streeting, Starmer’s Secretary of State for Health, has stated that he opposes legalizing euthanasia because the state of end-of-life care in the UK is horrifying—and because the notion of choice, considering the availability of palliative care, is farcical: “When I think about this question of burden, I do not think that palliative care … in this country is in a condition yet where we are giving people the freedom to choose without being coerced by the lack of support available.” Similar concerns were raised in a 2023 parliamentary report that emphasized the need for “major improvements” in end-of-life care.

Labour’s disabilities secretary, Sir Stephen Timms, also expressed his opposition. In 2022, he stated, “If we were to legalise assisted dying, we would impose an awful moral dilemma on every conscientious frail person nearing the end of their life … If ending their life early were legally permissible, many who do not want to end their life would feel under great, probably irresistible, pressure to do so. There is no way to stop that happening.” At least five senior ministers have already indicated that they plan to vote against assisted suicide.

Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, won a massive majority government. One of Starmer's election promises was to bring forth an assisted suicide bill. Van Maren continues:

The most insidious aspect of this is that Starmer knows what will happen if assisted suicide and euthanasia are legalized. His own health secretary has made it clear. So has the disabilities secretary. In fact, Canada—a Commonwealth country—has provided a singular case study over the past several years, with many euthanasia horror stories being featured prominently in the UK press. None of those supporting euthanasia have taken the trouble to rebut the assertion that ‘choice’ will play little role in many deaths. Considering the prevalence and prominence of the evidence, it is difficult not to conclude that they believe that is an acceptable price to pay.

Starmer is a long-time supporter of euthanasia and assisted suicide. The UK assisted suicide bill can be defeated if, during the debate, Canada's experience with euthanasia is continuously brought up. 

The UK cannot ignore how Canada's euthanasia law is out of control.

The many new Labour party MP's who were recently elected in the UK need to be open-minded and willing to research Canada's euthanasia reality. There are ample Canadian examples of what can happen when euthanasia or assisted suicide are legalized. 

Most Muslim doctors oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The British Islamic Medical Association (BIMA), which represents Muslim medical professionals across the UK, healthcare workers in response to a Scottish government consultation on assisted dying. 

The UK Parliament is expected to debate and vote on a assisted dying bill in England and Wales next week, with MPs to be given a free vote on a second reading vote likely before Christmas.

The BIMA survey found:

• 82% disagree or strongly disagree that it should be legal for a doctor to participate in Assisted Dying by undertaking the assessment process.
• 88% disagree or strongly disagree that it should be legal for a doctor to participate in Assisted Dying by prescribing life-ending medication.

The BIMA survey is particularly important now that Kim Leadbeater (MP) will introduce a private members bill to legalize assisted suicide in England and Wales. 

British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has said that he would give the assisted suicide private members bill government time in order to ensure that it goes to a vote.

The voice of the British Islamic Medical Association needs to be heard.

When Food and Water Withdrawal is Recommended to Hasten Death

This article was published on Nancy Valko's blog on October 9, 2024

Nancy Valko

By Nancy Valko

Recently, I was contacted by a man who was concerned about hospice care for his mother.

He wrote:

“I spoke to one hospice service that was recommended and asked about AHN (artificial hydration and nutrition) and I was basically told that if my mother became unconscious, they would not attempt to provide AHN. My mother has dementia and we’ve had a few scares where we were unsure she would recover. I’d like to understand what guideline I should expect the hospice to follow and whether hospice is even worth considering. Are there prescriptive standards of care that I can reference or could you tell me basically what routine care look like?”

I wrote back that I understood his concerns, especially since I recently lost a brother with dementia, diabetes and Crohn’s disease after a second fall down stairs. He had trouble eating so the doctors recommended a feeding tube.

Unfortunately, a person from palliative care told my sister-in-law that he would not improve so she decided to refuse a feeding tube.

I told her that newer feeding tubes were more comfortable, could make him feel better and were worth a try but she rejected this. She said my brother told her he would not want to live if he developed dementia - like our mother.

It took 4 long days for him to die.

I also told him that I have been writing about this problem for years, including my 2018 blog article “‘Living Wills’ to Prevent Spoon Feeding at: (Link).

I have seen the deterioration of medical ethics over 50 years as a nurse from requiring life-sustaining treatment unless it was medically futile or excessively burdensome to whatever is legal.

I would recommend to you two resources from the Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization (HALO):

1. “The Food and Water Dilemma” at: (Link).

2. “Making a Difference: A Guide for Defending the Medically Vulnerable” at: (Link).

Conclusion

I have worked in hospice, critical care, etc. for decades and I was glad to be able to care for my patients, my mother and others so that they had dignity, comfort and emotional support at the end of life. I hope these resources from HALO can help bring vital information, peace and comfort to others and their families.

Nancy Valko was a hospice and critical care nurse for many years.

Vote YES on West Virginia Amendment 1 for protection from assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

West Virginia voters need to Vote YES on Amendment 1 this election. 

Amendment 1 approves a constitutional amendment to prohibit assisted suicide, euthanasia and mercy killing in West Virginia.

West Virginia Amendment 1 states:

A "yes" vote supports amending the West Virginia Constitution to prohibit people from participating in "the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person."

A "no" vote opposes amending the West Virginia Constitution to prohibit people from participating in "the practice of medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of a person."

Vote YES.

Assisted suicide is prohibited in West Virginia. Amendment 1 will protect West Virginians from assisted suicide becoming legal by constitutionally prohibiting the act.

For more information go to: www.caringnotkilling.com

Previous articles on this issue.

• West Virginia ballot initiative would constitutionally prohibit euthanasia (Link).

People who are living with mental illness need care. Euthanasia is not the answer.

People who are living with mental illness need care. 

Order the pamphlet from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition for $30 for 50, $50 for 100, $100 for 250 (plus shipping and taxes). Further bulk orders are available upon request) (Order Link).

Euthanasia is not the answer.

On August 19, 2024, a euthanasia lobby group launched a court case to force Canada to extend euthanasia to mental illness alone.

Stephanie Taylor reported the following for The Canadian Press:

An application filed by Dying with Dignity in Ontario Superior Court on Monday argues that it is discriminatory to bar people with mental disorders from being eligible for an assisted death when it is available to people who suffer physically.(1)

Some background: The Canadian government legalized euthanasia for mental illness alone by passing Bill C-7 in March 2021. The government delayed the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone; the current regulations will permit it starting in March 2027.(2)

Considering how Canada’s euthanasia law has been implemented and the stories of people who have died or were urged to die by euthanasia, this court challenge shows how extreme Canada’s euthanasia lobby is.

Consider some of  the stories.

In August 2022, Global News reported that a Veterans Affairs employee had advocated euthanasia for a veteran living with PTSD:

A Canadian Forces veteran seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury was shocked when he was unexpectedly and casually offered medical assistance in dying by a Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) employee, sources tell Global News.(3)

Canadians were shocked that a veteran who served our country and was seeking help for PTSD was offered euthanasia (“MAiD”). With time, we learned that several other veterans were also offered euthanasia as a “treatment” option for PTSD and other mental health issues.

Christine Gauthier, a retired corporal and former Paralympian, revealed to lawmakers that she was offered medically assisted death by a VAC employee. Sean Boynton reported the following for Global News on December 2, 2022:

[R]etired corporal Christine Gauthier, who is paraplegic, told the House of Commons standing committee on veterans affairs that the topic of assisted dying was raised during a years-long fight for a home wheelchair lift.

“On the comment of medical assistance in dying…I was approached with that as well,” Gauthier testified. She described the comments of the VAC agent she spoke with as saying, “‘Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now.’”(4)

There is more to the story.

On August 20, 2024, Sheila Gunn Reid reported for Rebel News that she had obtained, through access to information, 2200 pages of documents recording the paper trail of an attempted cover-up of Veterans Affairs’ involvement in recommending euthanasia for veterans with disabilities and/or mental health concerns.

Nearly a dozen veterans experiencing acute post-traumatic stress disorder or asking for access to daily living to deal with service-related injuries came forward over recent years to say that their [VAC] case workers suggested a medically assisted death to them.(5)

More concerns with euthanasia for mental illness.

In June 2023, Kathrin Mentler, a woman who has lived with chronic suicidal ideation, went to Vancouver General Hospital during a mental health crisis to seek help, but instead was offered euthanasia. On August 9, 2023, Michelle Gamage for The Tyee reported the following:

“It was pretty disheartening and made me feel helpless,” Mentler says. “I’m coming here because I’m looking for help and you’re telling me there is no help.”

That’s when the counsellor asked Mentler if she’d ever considered medically assisted suicide.

Mentler says she was “shocked” and “sickened” because she came to the Access and Assessment Centre for help, “not for recommendations on how to kill myself.”(6)

What would happen to so many others, like Mentler, if euthanasia for mental illness alone became a legal and “medical” option?

Kurt Goddard, Executive Director of Legal and Public Affairs at Inclusion Canada, a leading disability rights organization, stated in January 2024 that euthanasia for mental illness should never come to pass. Goddard’s article in the Vancouver Sun stated the following:

I am haunted by a particularly difficult memory of my mother during a severe episode of her illness.

She once looked at me with desperation, expressing a wish for an end to her suffering in a way that was both shocking and heart-wrenching. This moment reminds me of the profound complexities surrounding mental illness. Her illness fluctuated; we later experienced many positive moments and memories.

Sharing this is not easy, but I feel it’s necessary to illustrate the stakes involved in the discussion on assisted suicide for mental illnesses.(7)

During our press conference on February 27, 2024, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) urged Canada’s parliament to completely scrap euthanasia for mental illness, not simply delay it. EPC was working with several young women who had lived with suicidal ideation and, if it was available, may have chosen death over living at a low point in their lives.

The euthanasia lobby argues that it is discrimination to deny people living with mental illness be denied euthanasia when people with physical illness have access to die by euthanasia.(8) The issue of euthanasia for mental illness alone is falsely connected to the concept of equality. The opposite is true—euthanasia is inherently discriminatory because it enables a doctor or nurse practitioner to decide if certain groups of people are worthy of living.

Canada’s euthanasia lobby promotes euthanasia for people with mental illness; they also want to force every medical institution in Canada to kill their patients. On June 17, 2024, Canada’s euthanasia lobby and the family of Samantha O’Neill launched a court case to this end. O’Neill is a woman who requested death by euthanasia in April 2023 at St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. St Paul’s refused; they transferred her to another facility where she died by euthanasia. The court case is designed to go to the Supreme Court of Canada. It is based on the concept that O’Neill’s rights were denied when she was “forced” to be transferred to another healthcare facility.(9)

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and our supporters will continue to resist the normalization of euthanasia in Canada.

Endnotes:

(1) Taylor, S. (2024, Aug 19). Canada’s assisted-dying law faces constitutional fight for excluding mental disorder. The Canadian Press. https://www.cp24.com/news/canada-s-assisted-dying-law-faces-constitutional-fight-for-excluding-mental-disorder-1.7006733

(2) Galko, M. (2024, Feb 27). Expansion of medical assistance in dying should be scrapped entirely, advocacy group says. National Post. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/stop-medical-assistance-in-dying-expansion-group-says

(3) Stephenson, M. & Boynton, S. (2022, Aug 16). Veterans Affairs says worker ‘inappropriately’ discussed medically assisted death with veteran. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/9061709/veteran-medical-assisted-death-canada/

(4) Boynton, S. (2022, Dec 2). Trudeau says assisted dying offers to veterans ‘unacceptable’ as cases mount. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/9321582/veterans-affairs-maid-cases-trudeau/

(5) Gunn Reid, S. (2024, Aug 20). Veterans Affairs Canada tried to hide euthanasia scandal paper trail. Rebel News. https://www.rebelnews.com/exclusive_veterans_affairs_canada_tried_to_hide_euthanasia_scandal_paper_trail

(6) Gamage, M. (2023, Aug 9). She Sought Help in Crisis and Was Suggested MAID Instead. The Tyee. https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/08/09/Medical-Assistance-Dying-Slippery-Slope-Mental-Illness-Disabled/

(7) Goddard, K. (2024, Jan 29). MAiD for mental illness should never come to pass. Vancouver Sun. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/kurt-goddard-we-must-reject-assisted-suicide-as-a-solution-for-mental-health-challenges

(8) Dying with Dignity Canada. (2024, Aug 19). Discriminatory exclusion of those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness from medical assistance in dying (MAID) faces Charter challenge [Press release]. https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MDSUMC_Lawsuit_PressRelease_EN_FINAL.pdf

(9) DeRosa, K. (2023, Jun 23). Woman with terminal cancer forced to transfer from St. Paul’s Hospital for assisted dying. Vancouver Sun. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/woman-with-terminal-cancer-forced-to-family-upset-by-st-pauls-hospital-maid-policy

Alleged suicide kit seller challenges murder charges to the Supreme Court of Canada

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Some of Kenneth Law's alleged victims

Kenneth Law who allegedly sold suicide kits to hundreds of people world-wide has challenged the murder charges against him to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Law was charged on May 9, 2023 with two counts of aiding and abetting suicide in the Peel Region, allegedly through the online sales of a legal substance that is lethal in high doses.

On December 12, 2023 CBC News Toronto reported that Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder. The CBC news report stated:

Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder, in addition to the 14 counts of counselling or aiding suicide that he was already facing.CBC News Toronto stated that York Regional Police Insp. Simon James, who heads up a multi-service task force investigating Law confirmed the charges at a news conference today. The new charges are related to the same alleged victims in multiple Ontario municipalities, from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

On October 7, 2024, Jon Woodward with CTV news reported that Law is challenging the second-degree murder charges to the Supreme Court of Canada. Woodward reported:

“Assisting suicide is not murder,” Law’s lawyers, Matthew Gourlay, Stephanie DiGuiseppe, and Taylor Wormington wrote in a brief filed Friday.

"Mr. Law is not alleged to have been present at any of the deaths. He is not alleged to have deceived the victims into unwittingly ending their own lives. It would impermissibly warp the language of the Code to assert that someone who mails a toxic substance that another person later voluntarily consumes in another location with suicidal intent has “actually committed” their murder," they write.

Woodward's report indicates that Law allegedly sold more than 1000 suicide kits with at least 130 people died after consuming the poison.

Imogen Nunn

On August 27, 2023 Jon Woodward reported for CP 24 that:

The British mom of a TikTok star is coming forward demanding justice after she found out her daughter died using a so-called suicide kit allegedly sold by a Canadian man, as deaths possibly tied to Kenneth Law rise to over 100.

Louise Nunn said it was sickening to learn that the death of her daughter Imogen, known as “Deaf Immy” to 710,000 TikTok followers, was one of 88 British people local police say died after ordering products from Law’s websites over a two-year period.

Nunn said it was heartbreaking to learn of other deaths months and years before Imogen’s, and believes many lives could have been saved if authorities had acted earlier.

Charges against Law include a 16-year-old suicide death in Ontario. CBC News reported on May 8 that 17-year-old Anthony Jones from Michigan allegedly died in connection to Law's suicide kit.

Law was selling a legal product, that he allegedly packaged in a lethal dose that was promoted and sold allegedly for the purpose of suicide.