Euthanasia promoting doctor admits that safeguards fail.

When safeguards fail, in the case of euthanasia, it means that someone has wrongfully died.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Last week, the Psychiatric Times published Part 2 of his series of articles titled: The Case for Medical Aid in Dying. by Dr Douglas Heinrichs.

In Part 2 Hendrichs responds to the arguement against MAiD concerning the consequences of legalization. Hendricks, who supports euthanasia, doesn't actually analyse the opposition to killing based on consequences but rather he examines the issues of safeguards and whether or not euthanasia undermines other policy priorities.

For those who oppose euthanasia, among other things, we oppose giving government, or another groups, such as physicians and nurses, the right in law to kill. This is the same reason that many people oppose capital punishment. Essentially opposition to MAiD is based on the belief that no group or individual should have the right in law to kill people.

It is interesting that Hendrichs acknowledges that "safeguards" fail. Hendrichs states:

This is not to say that every effort should not be made, both in formulating MAID legislation and fine-tuning it once it is enacted, to optimize safeguards that are effective as well as practical. But such safeguards will never be perfect. All laws about anything result in some instances in which the outcome is other than what the law intends.

Hendrichs is correct, but unlike other circumstances, MAiD is the intentional killing of a person. If the "safeguard" fails, it doesn't mean, as one of his examples state, that a person who is not disabled collects disability benefits, but rather it means that the person is dead.

Hendrichs then states:

Models designed to project risk and harm can be useful to consider, but they are notoriously unreliable, given that they always involve a host of assumptions that are only approximately true in the real world. As fallible human beings, the best we are likely to do is to make reasonable attempts to provide sensible safeguards and be prepared to fine-tune over time as experience accumulates. This is the equivalent of post-marketing reports of adverse effects with a new therapeutic agent.

I think that Hendrichs is correct but once again, with MAiD, when fallible human beings wrongly kill someone, that person is now dead. This is precisely why drug companies are expected to spend millions of dollars on research to ensure that the public will not expericne adverse effects of a new therapeutic agent. Nonetheless, if the therapeutic agent caused the recipients to die, the agent would hopefully be stopped.

Hendrichs, in part 1, argues that people who oppose MAiD usually do so from a religious point of view. Many people come from many different points of view nonetheless what unifies people who oppose MAiD is the belief that the government or a group of people, must not have the right in law to kill.

My life became less safe after Canada has legalized euthanasia.