By Dr Paul Saba
Dr Paul Saba
When Canada legalized assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia in 2016, it was supposed to be for only a “few” terminal illness patients with only days to live. As of December 31, 2023 approximately 60,000 Canadians had their lives ended by physician assisted dying (at the end of 2022 there were 44,958 assisted medical deaths). (Article Link).
Since March of 2021 the law has been further expanded to those with disabilities with decades to live and in 2027 those with only mental illness will be eligible for assisted suicide.
In October 2024 in the province of Quebec there will be advance directives for those with cognitive decline.
As a doctor, I know how dangerous it is when killing patients becomes part of the healthcare system. Physicians are not God. When doctors give a patient a diagnosis, we can be wrong. In fact, errors in diagnosis for severe, life-threatening conditions may be as high as twenty percent. (Research Link).
My patient Robert (pseudonym) came to me with a cough thinking he had a cold. I ordered a chest x-ray. According to the radiologist’s report of the chest film, Robert appeared to have lung cancer. I sat down with Robert and said: “We need to do a scan right away. We need to get you to see a specialist. We need to do a bronchoscopy….”
Robert responded: “Dr. Saba, I know you’re against assisted suicide, but you know what? I don’t necessarily agree with you. If I’m going to die, if my time is up….” I replied, “No, no. You have to go through the process because this is only a preliminary diagnosis. Even if it is lung cancer, it is treatable today. There are new treatments. It may not even be lung cancer.” I spoke to the radiologist who performed the lung scan, who said, “We’re not sure what it is. It appears to be lung cancer but it may be a lymphoma, which would be highly treatable.”
Robert is an intelligent, well-informed man, an engineer, who thought he had a cold, then was told he might have cancer. He could have resigned himself to a medically assisted death before he even knew what we were dealing with, since Canada’s law allows a person to not undergo all investigations necessary to confirm the diagnosis. He could have given up hope while the situation was still filled with hope. The power to move people to give up is one of the dangerous and misleading aspects of medically assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia However, I was able to get his attention and persuade him that the situation was hopeful and that he should get more tests and undergo treatment. In the end, he called me in the summer of 2019 to thank me because there was no further evidence of disease which is still the case today. He had finally been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a condition that is highly curable with proper medical treatment.
A Canadian study found that 13% of patients with a diagnosis of “lung cancer” who died by assisted suicide did not have a biopsy-proven diagnosis of lung cancer. Moreover, only a third of those diagnosed with advanced lung cancer underwent systemic treatments despite the availability of known effective treatments. (Research Link).
This is what happens when the door is opened to assisted dying/suicide/euthanasia. Robert could have been another assisted dying fatality. I am a doctor, who believes medicine must be grounded in solid science, in what research and experience teach us about how the body works and heals.
However, hope is one of the most powerful forces for good medical care. When I say hope is a powerful force for health, I mean that hope counsels us to patience, to seeing processes through, and to regarding every step as part of the great gift of being made for life. Assisted dying destroys that hope and leads people to giving up on life.
Dr. Paul Saba is a family physician who practices in Montreal. He is co-founder of Physicians for Social Justice (Link) and is the author of the book “Made to Live.”
+1 514-886-3447
pauljsaba@gmail.com
Dr. Paul Saba is willing to present oral arguments and respond to questions if requested.
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