Canadian cancer patient was "offered" euthanasia while entering the operating room.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Cameron Henderson that was published in The Telegraph on October 14 is an example of how aggressive the MAiD teams / euthanasia doctors and nurses are in Canada as they provide euthanasia but also promote it.

A 51-year-old Nova Scotia woman felt pressured to ask for euthanasia. Henderson reports:

Speaking anonymously, the 51-year-old cancer patient said of the moment she was offered death instead of surgery: “It floored me... [it was] the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt in my life”.

The patient, a married grandmother from Nova Scotia, explained she was set to undergo a mastectomy operation for breast cancer when a physician asked her if she knew about medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Henderson continues:

“I was sitting in two surgical gowns, one frontways and one backwards, with a cap on my hair and booties on my feet. I was shivering and in a hard plastic chair and all alone in a hallway,”

“The [doctor] sat down and went through all the scary things with me. Then he asked ‘Did you know about medical assistance in dying?’

“All I could say was, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’.

“I was scared and I was alone and I was cold and I didn’t know what was coming.

“Why was I being asked about assisted dying, when I was on my way into what I truly believe was life-saving surgery?”

The woman said that she was offered euthanasia again, nine months later, before undergoing a second mastectomy and then asked about MAiD a third time while in recovery from her second mastectomy.

The woman said that she felt - Better Off Dead - when she was asked multiple times. Henderson reported:

She said the repeat offers made her feel like a burden to doctors and that people in her position “were better off dead”.

“I felt like a problem that needed to be [gotten] rid of instead of a patient in need of treatment.

“I don’t want to be asked if I want to die,”

Dr Leonie Herx

Dr Leonie Herx, a palliative medicine consultant in Calgary, told Henderson that

staff-shortages are so bad in some Canadian hospitals that patients who are not at risk of imminent death are offered MAID before they’ve even had a chance to see a palliative care consultant.

In one instance, she claimed that one of her patients saw a MAID consultant first, and when she came back to check on him the next day, he had already been given an assisted death.

“In some cases, MAID has become the only therapy provided, which is completely horrific from a medical perspective,” Dr Herx said, in what will serve as a stark warning to the UK, where the NHS is facing a £37 billion funding gap with acute shortages in palliative care.

Herx's last comment concers the fact that the UK is debating the legalization of assisted suicide while the National Health Service is facing a massive funding gap. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has received multiple complaints concerning family member or friends being asked if they want MAiD on multiple occasions. One woman asked us how to get the MAiD team to stop asking her husband if he wants MAiD. She said, he had already said NO five times.