Canadian Push for Medical Schools to Teach Euthanasia

This article was published by National Review online on September 29, 2020

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

You knew it would come to this. The push is on in Canada to persuade medical schools to teach students how to euthanize patients — that is, to commit homicide — known euphemistically as medical assistance in dying (MAID). Now, the Canadian Medical Educational Journal lists several suggestions on how to persuade medical schools to include lethal injection training in the curricula. From the study:

We identified numerous change driving and change restraining influences that impacted the inclusion of MAID topics in health sciences curricula. MAID inclusion into health sciences curricula may be aided by the use of faculty development modules to support knowledge attainment and reconciliation of personal beliefs. MAID entry-level competencies and inclusion of MAID in accreditation standards would support informed curricular placement, including the years and courses for content inclusion and leveling of student competencies.

Furthermore, MAID specific course objectives in courses would assist the consistency of MAID inclusion. It is essential to identify the forces impacting MAID content inclusion in curricula, so the drivers of change can be capitalized, and the “inertial constraints” are recognized and mitigated to move health sciences curriculum into an era of MAID as a legally available care option.

When the Canadian Supreme Court imposed a nationwide right to euthanasia on Canada, I thought that the medical community would fight back and that only a few bottom feeders would participate. But to my great shock, the medical and nursing associations have been the law’s greatest boosters and most enthusiastic proponents for expanding eligibility. This “study,” really an advocacy document, is just the latest case in point.

Think about this, too. Time that would otherwise be spent on teaching new doctors how to treat, heal, palliate, counsel, and diagnose serious medical maladies will instead be refocused on teaching them how to kill patients. Moreover, professors will be expected to convince students that killing the sick and disabled is proper and ethical practice. It is a subversion of everything that medical school should be about.

Finally, brilliant and talented would-be doctors may well decide to pursue a different career because being a doctor could now require them to lethally inject patients. I know that would stop me.

It’s all so disheartening. Euthanasia corrupts everything it touches.