MAiD (euthanasia). How does death actually occur?

So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Bridge City News did an interview with Dr Joel Zivot, who is a Candian anesthesiologist and adjunct professor at Emory University in the United States. Zivot spoke to the Bridge City News about how euthanasia drugs cause death. I have edited the comments by Zivot for length. Zivot stated:

I'm an anesthesiologist and I also do intensive care medicine. I'm from Canada originally and I've been in the US for a number of years, and I'm always interested with what's happening in Canada. I have practised in Canada and I trained in Canada.

Zivot comments on the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision that led to the legalization of euthanasia, which is known as MAiD in Canada. Zivot continued:

I was concerned that such an action would imperil medical professionalism in Canada because it seemed to be advocating a wholesale ethical change as to what physicians are supposed to be doing. Medicine is interested in saving life, not taking it.

...In my intensive care capacity I encounter a lot of patients who die and that's normal and natural but the idea that medicine could be transformed into a practice that I could actually kill someone and call it treatment. Now treatment can be killing. That, of course, to me is an anathema to the ethical practice of medicine.

In the US I am also involved with the area of the death penalty. The reason I got involved in the death penalty is the use of science and medicine as a method of punishing people. The most common method of execution in the US is lethal injection which takes certain types of chemicals that in my hands are medicine and in the state's hands are poison and repurposes them to kill prisoners.

Zivot comments on his beliefs related to the death penalty and then says:

It's not the job of the doctor to kill prisoners and it is not the job of the tools of medicine. So my protest is that if the state wants to executive people, it has to use a technique that isn't an impersonation of medicine.

Zivot then comments on Canada's euthanasia program:

Assistance in Dying in Canada is strikingly similar to the way that prisoners are executed in the United States. When I realized that was going on that caught my attention.

I have reviewed hundreds of autopsies of prisoners executed using lethal injection and found a strikingly common finding of bloody froth in their lungs. So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.

You may have no sympathy for convicted murderers but the US Constitution makes it very clear that when a prisoner is punished that the punishment can't be cruel. I believe that the punishment of lethal injection creates a cruel death.

I brought those same concerns to Canada. My concern in the Canadian assisted dying system is that there's been a persistent dishonesty in exactly what is happening when people are being killed by MAiD.

Dr Zivot was asked about the drugs that are being used for euthanasia. Zivot responds:

No drug company is manufacturing a drug where the labelled indication is to kill. It's not made for that. ...In both the death penalty and assisted dying, it's recognized that these drugs can be repurposed and be converted into poison.

Zivot comments on medical politics in Canada. He then speaks about dying with dignity:

There's been little focus on is the killing part of being dead. To get from alive to dead, you have to be killed, you have to die, and that's not instantaneous. So there's a thing that has to be done to you that causes your death. And that can take some time. 

So words like dignity of course, what does it mean to be dignified, to die with dignity? ...

So to suggest somehow that the only dignity available to people who are suffering is to kill them feels to me to be a very sinister use of the word dignity.

You're basically saying that if you want to be alive and in pain that there is something wrong with you. So if your not dying with dignity then you're living with undignity.

That's branding, that's a false and pernicious claim about people who want to be alive.

Zivot was asked about euthanasia being extended to people with mental illness alone in March 2027. Zivot responds:

That's obviously very disconcerting. Let's hope that between now and then that clearer heads prevail.

I take care of a lot of people who are mentally ill. I have patients who've tried to kill themselves. 

When I encounter them, my assumption is that they want to live. Sure enough, in many cases once they have recovered from their attempted suicide, they live. Sometimes there's gratitude.

I think that you want your doctor to assume that you want to live. Mental illness leads to a series of bad decisions. I don't know how. if we say that a person has mental illness and loses capacity, that the capacity to request death, that capacity is preserved.

So why is a person who is mentally ill able to make that decision? 

Zivot then comments his experience with patients with mental illness and how they are cared for to help them live. Zivot states:

If there is some particular theoretical person who has thought about it, who's done every possible thing, who is not under resourced, who is not lonely, ... and you think that person should be allowed to die? I still don't think it's my job to do it. 

The problem is that once you make that available, you create opportunities and incentives for people to die and that's the worst possible thing.

Zivot was then asked, if lethal injection results in death by drowning, why aren't there more doctors screaming from the rooftops? Zivot responds:

I presented my concerns to the Senate of Canada and I was roundly criticized for it. When I was testifying, a person who was there waiting their turn to speak was an advocate of MAiD, when talking about MAiD he began to cry and said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

When it came to my turn, I said to the chairperson, if you would like me to cry, I can do that too, if that would be effective.

I am not suggesting that this person was not sincere, but the sense that the only beauty lies in killing is a terrible, terrible idea. 

Zivot was then asked for his final comments. He said:

MAiD is basically saying that if you don't have MAiD then you're facing a terrible painful death. That is untrue.

Palliative care is a branch of medicine that is probably underfunded. Even without palliative care, I'm a physician in intensive care and I deal with people who are dying and I'm pretty comfortable in providing people with sedation or pain control to allow a natural death.

I don't need to kill them. They will die and they don't have to die in pain. 

What people really need is companionship.

Zivot spoke about a study on labour epidurals. The study found that when a woman has companionship and support that the pain she experienced was less. Zivot continued:

We should be there in support of people while they live. If death is going to occur, then we should provide something to ease the pain of natural dying but we don't need to kill them to do that. It's just not true. 

I think that MAiD has created this illusion that there's only two choices. It's either a miserable painful death or MAiD.

That has to stop and be challenged.

Zivot ended the interview by commenting on the effect of Canada's Charter on the euthanasia issue.

Previous articles concerning Dr Joel Zivot (Link to articles).

Is assisted suicide always peaceful?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The question of whether or not assisted suicide poison cocktails actually lead to a peaceful death has been examined and studied by several researchers and medical professionals.

Manuela Callari just added to the debate with an article that was published in Medscape on February 3, 2026. Callari writes:

The scene was meticulously set for a final, serene farewell. Family and friends gathered, champagne was poured, and a pianist played softly in the background. In this atmosphere of profound emotion, Arjen Göbel, MD, a general practitioner in Amstelveen, Netherlands, began the procedure that would bring a planned and peaceful end to his patient’s life.

Following the standard protocol, he began by injecting a coma-inducing drug. The 48-year-old patient with breast cancer closed her eyes and a deep hush fell over the room as her breathing grew shallower.

But the expected stillness did not come. The family noticed that the patient continued to breathe. Göbel, maintaining an outward calm, saw it too.

Callari reports that the woman didn't die. Göbel fetched an emergency kit and injected her again, but she still didn't die. Callari reports:

Göbel called an ambulance service while he fetched two more emergency kits from a nearby pharmacy. The paramedics helped him inject the lethal cocktail directly into a vein in her groin, but nothing happened. They then injected the fourth dose into the artery in her neck. It wasn’t until half an hour later at 6 o’clock in the evening — 4 hours after the first injection — that she finally died. The planned, beautiful farewell had become a prolonged and traumatic ordeal. “It was the worst thing in my life,” Göbel told Medscape News Europe.

Callari continues by explaining that unlike other "procedures" there are very studies or protocols concerning euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Similar stories of long drawn-out deaths can be witnessed in the Oregon assisted suicide data which indicated that one death, in 2023, took 137 hours to be completed.

Callari then defines euthanasia and assisted suicide for clarity.

Euthanasia is the intentional, direct administration of a lethal substance by a physician to end a patient’s life at their voluntary request to end unbearable suffering.

Assisted dying (suicide) is the voluntary, self-administered ingestion of lethal drugs prescribed by a physician. Crucially, the patient, not the doctor, performs the final, fatal act.

Notice how Callari uses pro-death definitions by implying that the wish to be killed is based on ending unbearable suffering, when the data in nearly every jurisdiction that allows death by lethal poison indicate that only a minority seek death based on ending unbearable suffering.

Callari then explains how euthanasia was first legalized in the Netherlands. Callari comments on the lack of protocols by stating:

It wasn’t until around 2010 — 8 years after the Dutch Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act was officially introduced — that physicians approached pharmacists to develop a joint guideline. This collaboration resulted in the first combined protocol in 2012, with its most recent major update in 2021.

Today, the Dutch standard for euthanasia is a two-step intravenous (IV) process: a high dose of a coma-inducing barbiturate (typically propofol) followed by a neuromuscular blocker (usually rocuronium) to paralyze the respiratory muscles. A small dose of lidocaine is often injected prior to the process to reduce the burning sensation of the barbiturate.

Without going into further descriptions around killing it is important to note that the Callari suggests that the complications rate is generally under-reported and states that the 2023 Oregon data indicates a 9.8% complications rate.

Callari also comments on studies on the effect of the poison drug regimen on the body, particularly the lungs, and states:

Philippe Camus, MD, professor of pulmonology and respiratory intensive care at Dijon University Hospital in Dijon, France, has studied the effect of drugs on the lungs since 1972, when he began collecting data as a medical student at the University of Burgundy. Over five decades, he has compiled more than 200,000 references into a global database tracking drug-induced respiratory disease.

Even at therapeutic dosages, he explained, anesthetics such as propofol can cause ventilatory depression, a deep coma, peripheral vasodilation, and myocardial dysfunction. At therapeutic doses, however, these risks are minimal and promptly managed. “The poison is in the dose,” he said.

Callari quotes Didier Cataldo, MD, PhD, pulmonologist at the University of Liège in Liège, Belgium who explains:

These drugs shut down the brain’s drive to breathe, the patient becomes comatose, and breathing slows and becomes shallow. A deep coma can lead to loss of airway reflexes, which means the patient is no longer able to cough or gag. The tongue falls back, blocking the upper airway and causing effort during inhalation. This creates a vacuum inside the chest. As the diaphragm contracts to draw air into the lungs against a closed glottis, the pressure inside the alveoli drops rapidly and becomes significantly lower than the pressure in the surrounding blood vessels. This pressure difference acts like a suction pump. It forces fluid, and sometimes red blood cells, out of the pulmonary capillaries and across the thin membrane into the alveoli, resulting in negative pressure pulmonary edema. This is why, in standard surgery, patients are sometimes intubated and connected to a ventilator before the full anesthetic load is delivered. Anesthetics can also cause vasodilation and myocardial dysfunction. This causes a drastic drop in blood pressure, making it impossible for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body.

While Cataldo claims that pulmonary endema is rare he does refer to a case of an 18-year-old male who ingested a lethal overdose of pentobarbital, the same barbiturate used in the oral method for assisted death. When emergency teams arrived, they found the patient in cardiac arrest. But as they attempted to intubate him, they found a “substantial quantity of frothy, bloody secretions” discharging from his throat. A postmortem CT scan confirmed severe bilateral pulmonary edema. His lungs were sodden with fluid. The patient, sedated but perhaps not yet dead, might have struggled to breathe against a blocked airway, drowning himself from the inside.

Similar research by Dr Joel Zivot who researched autopsies of people who died by lethal injection capital punishment. Zivot found that the lungs were filled with fluid likely resulting in death by drowning.

Callari continues with comments by Philippe Camus:

Camus said that experiencing pulmonary edema would be like drowning on dry land. It feels like being forced to breathe through a narrow straw. Every attempt to inhale draws not air but a mixture of blood and fluid that churns into a thick, pink froth. This foam rises up the trachea, blocking the windpipe. The brain, starved of oxygen, triggers a state of panic. “We need to decide whether that’s pain,” Camus said. “It’s not physical pain but can be extremely distressing.”

Callari then interviews several euthanasia doctors who suggest that pulmonary edema is unlikely, but even if it is happening, that the amount of drug that is used causes the person to be in a deep coma and unlikely to experience pain or distress.

Nonetheless, Callari concludes by stating that we simply don't know if assisted suicide is always peaceful.

More articles on this topic:

• Death by assisted suicide is not what you think it is (Link). 
• Assisted suicide: Proceed with caution (Link). 
• Assisted suicide is the wrong prescription (Link). 
• Assisted suicide. It's not that simple (Link). 
• Assisted suicide deaths are not what you think they are (Link). 
• Assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified (Link).

Assisted Suicide: Proceed With Caution.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Joel Zivot who is an associate professor of anesthesiology/ surgery at Emory University and a senior fellow at the Emory Center for Ethics wrote an article about the UK assisted suicide debate that was published by Medpage Today on December 26, 2024.

Zivot's article is based on the British assisted suicide debate but his article effectively challenges assisted suicide in general. Zivot writes:

For now, British assisted dying intends to pattern itself after the Oregon model as outlined in the state's Death with Dignity Act. Oregon assisted dying has itself come under scrutiny, including concerns about complications. However, if Britain, a U.S. state, or any other country were to pivot and follow the Canadian model, I fear the consequences would be even worse.

Zivot then comments on the Canadian euthanasia model:

In the aftermath of the Carter decision, MAID has accelerated and expanded at a pace scarcely imaginable. In 2016, the country had 1,018 MAID deaths. By 2023, that number increased more than 15-fold to 15,343, for a total of more than 60,000 Canadian deaths by MAID since the passage of the legislation. That number continues to grow every year. Canada's MAID program is the fastest-growing assisted-dying program in the world. Since its passage, the law was expanded and now, death does not need to be foreseeable. MAID is available for any grievous and irremediable medical condition. MAID is not currently available for mental health reasons, but there has been discussion of this possibility.

MAID eligibility can occur rapidly in some cases, and very few MAID requests are denied. However, wait times to see a doctor for traditional medical care can be significantly prolonged: a Canadian citizen might wait 4 months to see a psychiatrist in some parts of Canada, but in other regions, that wait can be several years. Some groups believe that MAID should be available to children under certain circumstances. MAID has also been incentivized by offering it as a pathway for organ donation, a violation of the ethical principle of the dead donor rule. MAID has been requested and granted to prisoners facing lengthy prison sentences.

Zivot explains how euthanasia in Canada is done.

In Canada, the majority of euthanasia is done via an injection of substantial dosages of the anesthetic agents propofol, midazolam, and the paralytic rocuronium. Propofol and midazolam are likely not the cause of death. Instead, it is most likely the rocuronium, leading to death by muscle paralysis. Once paralyzed, MAID deaths will appear outwardly calm and peaceful. However, this is essentially death by asphyxiation. The U.S. death penalty commonly uses an intravenous cocktail known as lethal injection. This cocktail is strikingly similar to Canadian MAID. Studies show lethal injection can cause rapid accumulation of fluid in the lungs -- prisoners feel they are drowning as they die. Far from dignified, death by MAID may be highly distressing.

The Luminous Veil

Zivot then compares assisted suicide to suicide.

Before MAID, a Canadian story provided such an example. In 2003, a suicide prevention barrier, the luminous veil, was installed at Toronto's Bloor Street Viaduct bridge. Once in place, this barrier blocked people from jumping off the bridge. Before this, the Bloor Street Viaduct bridge was the second most common place in North America for suicide by jumping after the notorious killer, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After the luminous veil was installed, not only did the suicide rate from the bridge fall to near-zero (only two have taken place from 2003-2020), but the overall rate of bridge-related suicide dropped in Toronto. There was also no change in suicides by other methods.

This finding might mean that when it is harder to commit suicide, people may choose not to. Could the opposite be true, too? When suicide is more available, some people will choose it when, in other circumstances, perhaps they may not. The confluence of misery and means that leads some to suicide cannot be minimized. An effective way to prevent a person from dying by suicide is to restrict that person's access to the means of ending his or her life. This approach, known as means restriction, is utilized in a complementary fashion with mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Of note, Britain has been a leader in implementing means restriction policies. Poisoning by coal gas was the leading cause of suicide death in Britain before the mandatory switch to natural gas. In Britain, paracetamol (acetaminophen in the U.S.) has been only available in blister packs (with limited pill quantities) since 1998 to reduce the incidence of suicide by intentional overdose.

Zivot concludes:

The job of medicine is to protect vulnerable patients. The prospect of euthanizing anyone prematurely undermines public trust and degrades the medical profession. Also, the technique used in Canada may cause death in a fashion more sinister than acknowledged.

As Britain considers and debates its assisted-dying bill, it must do so cautiously. Advancing age and illness addle us all. A functioning civil society is meant to protect us when we cannot protect ourselves. Unchecked, assisted suicide risks sending the message that the sick are less valued people, better off dead than alive.

Previous articles related to Dr Joel Zivot (Link to articles)

The Delaware Senate would have been right to defeat assisted suicide Bill HB 140.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On June 25 the Delaware Senate passed assisted suicide Bill HB 140 by a vote of 11 to 10. This was a reversal to their June 20 vote when the Delaware Senate defeated Bill HB 140 by a 9 to 9 vote.

As the Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, it is obvious that I oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide. Opposition to HB 140 may be based on the same reasoning that I have or it may be based on the effect of legalizing assisted suicide. 

During the Senate hearing the President of Compassion & Choices lied three times.

The first lie was that there have been no abuses of the law.

An article by Jennifer Brown that was published in the Colorado Sun on March 14, 2022 reported that Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani, an internal medicine doctor who specializes in eating disorders published a paper on how she prescribed assisted suicide for three people with anorexia nervosa in Colorado. Gaudiani approved assisted suicide for Anorexia Nervosa by redefining this chronic condition as terminal.

Kevin Dias, the Chief Legal Advocacy Officer for Compassion & Choices responded to the Colorado Sun article by stating:

Medical aid-in-dying laws apply only to mentally capable, terminally ill patients with six months or less to live who are able to self-ingest the medication. Any deviation from these requirements violates the law and places physicians, family members and others in regulatory, civil and criminal jeopardy. This law does not and was never intended to apply to a person whose only diagnosis is anorexia nervosa.

Kevin Dias admitted that the law was violated. To make matters worse, the Oregon 2021 assisted suicide report listed Anorexia Nervosa as a reason for at least one assisted suicide death.

The second lie is her statement there is no "slippery slope." To summarize:

Oregon: In 2019 Oregon expanded their assisted suicide law by giving doctors the ability to waive the 15 day waiting period when a person was deemed as near to death. In 2022 Compassion and Choices launched a lawsuit to force Oregon to allow non-residents to die by assisted suicide. In 2023 Oregon removed the residency requirement extending assisted suicide nationally to anyone.

California: In 2021 California expanded their assisted suicide law by reducing the waiting period from 15 days to 48 hours and forcing doctors who oppose assisted suicide to be complicit in the process (later struck down by the court).

New Mexico: In 2021 New Mexico passed assisted suicide Bill HB 47 further codifying the assisted suicide lobby's expansion plans. HB 47 did not require a 15 day waiting period but rather it required a 48 hour waiting period that can be waived if the health care provider believes that the person may be near to death, technically allowing a same day death. HB 47 also had an expanded definition of who could prescribe and participate in assisted suicide by allowing non-physicians defined as "health care providers" to approve and prescribe lethal drugs. "Health care providers" includes physicians, licensed physician assistants, osteopathic physicians, or nurses registered in advanced practice. The assisted suicide lobby is expanding who can prescribe and participate since very few physicians are willing to assist a suicide.

Vermont: In 2022 Vermont expanded their assisted suicide law by removing the 48 hour waiting period, (allowing a same day death), removing the requirement that an examination be done in person, (allowing approvals by telehealth), and extending legal immunity to anyone who participates in the act. Compassion & Choices launched a lawsuit demanding that Vermont change their law to permit non-resident to die by assisted suicide. In 2023 Vermont expanded their assisted suicide law by removing the residency requirement to allow anyone to die by assisted suicide.

Washington State: In 2023 Washington State expanded their assisted suicide law by allowing advanced practice registered nurses to approve and prescribe lethal poison, by reducing the waiting period to 7 days and requiring healthcare institutions and hospices to post their assisted suicide policies.

Hawaii: In 2023 Hawaii expanded their assisted suicide law by reducing the waiting period to 5 days, by allowing the waiting period to be waived if the person is near to death and by allowing advanced practice registered nurses to approve and prescribe lethal poison.

Colorado: On June 5, 2024 Colorado Governor Gary Polis signed Senate Bill 24-068 to expand their State assisted suicide law.

New Jersey. There is currently a lawsuit by Compassion and Choices challenging the New Jersey state residency requirement for assisted suicide.

Whatever language is contained within a state assisted suicide bill, Compassion & Choices will support it and then, within a few years, pressure states that legalize assisted suicide, to expand their law. Compassion & Choices will also launch court cases to force them to do so.

The third lie was stating that all of the laws are similar to the Oregon law.

I have no love for the Oregon law, but assisted suicide laws have similarities and differences to the Oregon law.

By reading the multiple expansions that have been approved in states that have legalized assisted suicide, it is clear that the laws differ in the states that have legalized assisted suicide.

A key question is: How do people die by assisted suicide?

How people die by assisted suicide is a fundamental question, but the question is often ignored based on people supporting the theory that assisted suicide is necessary to relieve suffering.

There are two key points concerning how people die by assisted suicide.

The assisted suicide lobby has been doing human experiments to find cheaper, effective ways to kill. When reading the Oregon Death with Dignity annual reports you will notice that the drug combinations used to poison people by assisted suicide are continuously changing.

These experiments have led to concerning results, such as painful deaths and long drawn out deaths. Assisted suicide activists have been experimenting with lethal drug cocktails on people approved for assisted suicide.

Some of the assisted suicide deaths are painful. The Seattle Times reported in September 2017 that:

The first Seconal alternative turned out to be too harsh, burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain. The second drug mix, ... has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients — and up to 31 hours in one case.

An article by Lisa Krieger published by the Medical Xpress on September 8, 2020 uncovers information about the lethal drug experiments:

A little-known secret, not publicized by advocates of aid-in-dying, was that while most deaths were speedy, others were very slow. Some patients lingered for six or nine hours; a few, more than three days. No one knew why, or what needed to change.

"The public thinks that you take a pill and you're done," said Dr. Gary Pasternak, chief medical officer of Mission Hospice in San Mateo. "But it's more complicated than that."

In 2023, the longest time for an assisted suicide death in Oregon was 137 hours.

The second issue is how do people die by assisted suicide?

An article published in September 2021 by the Spectator reported on finding by Dr Joel Zivot who argues that assisted suicide is not a painless or peaceful death. Zivot states:

I am quite certain that assisted suicide is not painless or peaceful or dignified. In fact, in the majority of cases, it is a very painful death.

The death penalty is not the same as assisted dying, of course. Executions are meant to be punishment; euthanasia is about relief from suffering. Yet for both euthanasia and executions, paralytic drugs are used. These drugs, given in high enough doses, mean that a patient cannot move a muscle, cannot express any outward or visible sign of pain. But that doesn’t mean that he or she is free from suffering.

Assisted suicide is sold to the public as offering a quick and peaceful death. Assisted suicide is far more complicated than that.

Canadian veteran slams euthanasia law for targeting her peers.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalitio

Kelsi Sheren, who was an artillery specialist in Afghanistan and is now the CEO of Brass and Unity, a jewellery company which works to prevent military veterans from committing suicide.

Recently Kelsi Sheren and Jordon Peterson did a podcast titled: The Horrifying Truth Behind MAiD that they aren't telling you (Link).

Sheren, who was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder upon her return home to Canada and considered suicide regularly, views herself as someone who could have been a candidate for euthanasia.

Sheren is now fighting to protect veterans from MAiD.

Clayton DeMaine reported on June 19 for True North Wire that:

She started her fight against Canada’s “medical assistance in dying” program after hearing her fellow veterans had been offered assisted suicide at a time when accessing treatments can be difficult.

Kelsi Sheren

DeMaine reports Sheren as saying:

“Why is it that we can access death care, but we can’t access a genuine treatment that can help us become a functioning healthy, taxpaying part of society?”

Sheren attributes her mental health recovery to the use of plant medicine therapy.

DeMaine reports:

“My issue with (euthanasia) is how we are killing people and how we have a predatory behaviour of telling individuals that they can’t heal, they can’t get better, and the solution to their problems is death,”

Sheren is concerned with the role of the government in promoting euthanasia.

She said the government shouldn’t be in charge of the program, because many of the problems that lead someone to want suicide could be a result of the government’s mismanagement.

DeMaine reports that Sheren is also concerned with how people die by euthanasia:

She pointed to studies conducted by anesthesiologist and intensive care medicine specialist Dr. Joel Zivot on the effects of paralytic drugs in capital punishment, drugs that he said are similar to those used in the death cocktails offered by doctors in the “MAiD” program.

DeMaine interviewed Dr Joel Zivot concerning his research on the effects of the drugs used for euthanasia.

Zivot warned that the use of paralytics in Canada’s “MAiD” system may be giving patients a “terrifying” death rather than the peaceful death many advocates of the program say it is.

Though there haven’t been large-scale autopsies to study the effects of MAiD, Zivot found that 79% of U.S. prisoners had a “bloody frothy liquid” in their lungs after being executed with two paralytic drugs.

He said propofol that’s used in Canada’s euthanasia programs can do the same thing as the drugs used to execute those prisoners in the U.S., in a process he said was “akin to waterboarding.”

“(Paralytics) have no effect on unconsciousness or pain control, when a person is given only a paralytic they would be very much awake and very much in pain,” Zivot said. “Outwardly, if you looked at a person who was paralyzed, you know, it might look very peaceful because, of course, they wouldn’t be moving at all…but on the inside their internal experience could be quite terrifying.”

He said MAiD practitioners are “suffocating people to death.”

Zivot also warned that euthanasia is also being used to encourage people to donate their organs.

Kelsi Sheren became opposed to euthanasia after learning that soldiers who had served our country were being encouraged to die by euthanasia.

Sheren is right. It is crazy that people who served our country are being offered death rather than treatment to live.

Previous article: Afghanistan veteran slams Canadian government for euthanasia of veterans. (Link).

Canadian Virtual Hospice promotes euthanasia book for children

 The Canadian Virtual Hospice (virtualhospice.ca) has published an "activity book" aimed at normalizing euthanasia (MAiD) for children.

A web-based resource launched in 2004 to be a “platform [that] could address some of the national gaps in palliative care,” the Canadian Virtual Hospice was the first attempt at connecting Canadians with an array of health specialists online to help them face the daunting task of accompanying their ill and dying loved ones at the end of their lives. As reported on its website, “visits to Virtual Hospice continue to climb – from 34,000 in 2004 to 2.3 million in 2020,” which bespeaks the desperate need to shore up this crucial yet often-overlooked segment in healthcare.

On July 26th, 2022, The Canadian Virtual Hospice, which gets funding from such organizations as the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Health Canada, and Veteran Affaires Canada, announced its newest children's resource available on its website:

https://t.co/eZbZLrz4Bu is home to The Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book! Created for young people who have someone in their life who may have MAiD, this resources if available for free download. https://t.co/ugopiHYWus pic.twitter.com/um13rVqItL

— Canadian Virtual Hospice (@VirtualHospice) July 26, 2022

The activity book is replete with vibrant colours, graphics, and a juvenile font, and includes a section that explains the three "medicines" taken to kill a human being. On page 4, Step number 3 states:

The third medicine makes the person’s lungs stop breathing and then their heart stops beating. Because of the coma, the person does not notice this happening and it does not hurt. When their heart and lungs stop working, their body dies.

Meanwhile, some doctors have actually been frank in their admissions that they have no idea whether euthanasia “does not hurt,” since, as reported in a recent National Post article, during the euthanasia procedure: 

Monitors aren’t used. There are no monitors measuring brain waves or heart activity. Doctors say it would take away from the intimacy of the experience for the person and the family. 

This reassurance has also been challenged by Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and critical care doctor at Emory University School of Medicine who has studied how lethal injections impact prisoners' bodies; he has called both for autopsies to be done on MAiD deaths to see exactly how the poison impacted the body, and for paralyzing agents to not be used in the procedure in order to have a more realistic assessment of the MAiD recipient’s experience (link).

Christopher Lyon

While the activity book contains “helpful” exercises such as suggested questions the child can ask the would-be MAiD recipient and a feelings chart, Twitter user Dr. Christopher Lyon (@ChristophLyon) pointed out the inability of the activity book to address the fundamentally flawed premise behind assisted death – the fact that doctors cause a death instead of stopping it – and thus, it can't help the child process the trauma of a betrayal of their trust in healthcare providers:

However, kids who lose a parent or sibling to suicide can be deeply traumatised by the experience. What happens with children when doctors *help* the suicide instead of stop it? #MAiD https://t.co/VOQgbR9Irw

— Dr. Christopher Lyon (@ChristophLyon) July 26, 2022

Even more disturbing, the MAID to MAD initiative (@VulnerableC7) pointed out the similarity in branding between the “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity book” and the “Me and My Illness” activity books that The Virtual Hospice provides, both aimed at children:

The branding and design continuity across these @VirtualHospice documents - both aimed at children - is striking. Wondering about associations being made in the minds of sick kids and #MAiD especially as #AMAD considers expanding MAiD to children (mature minors). pic.twitter.com/esjd550TMK

— MAID to MAD initiative AMM devient MAM (@VulnerablC7) July 28, 2022

If the message being sent with this colourful and engaging activity book is that euthanasia is a normal, innocuous act that *doesn’t hurt* and is appropriate for anyone who is in pain, how can a sick and/or suffering child escape the conclusion that it may be an appropriate solution for them - especially once MAiD is extended to mature minors?

Is an assisted death 'quick and painless'?

This article was published by Mercatornot on November 1, 2021.

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

Campaigners for 'assisted dying' paint a rosy picture of a gentle, easy death. It doesn't always happen that way.

Similar article: Assisted suicide is neither painles nor dignified (Link).

The marketing strategy of right-to-die organisations has not changed much over the past 150 years. In 1872 a British writer, Samuel D. Williams, wrote a book advocating the use of the novel anaesthetic chloroform to give patients “a quick and painless death”. In 1931 the British eugenicist Dr Killick Millard proposed legalisation of euthanasia “to substitute for the slow and painful death a quick and painless one”.

Now that legalisation has arrived, however, doctors have realised that a Q&P death is easier said than done.

Writing in a recent issue of The Spectator (UK), Dr Joel Zivot, a Georgia physician, expresses his doubts about whether lethal medications are the way forward. He studied the autopsy reports of more than 200 prisoners executed with lethal injections and found that many may have died in great pain.

“The death penalty is not the same as assisted dying, of course. Executions are meant to be punishment; euthanasia is about relief from suffering. Yet for both euthanasia and executions, paralytic drugs are used. These drugs, given in high enough doses, mean that a patient cannot move a muscle, cannot express any outward or visible sign of pain. But that doesn’t mean that he or she is free from suffering.”

Dr Zivot believes that pentobarbital, which, it seems, is used in Oregon in 4 out of 5 assisted suicides, caused pulmonary oedema – the lungs fill with liquid secretions and the person can die in agony. “Advocates of assisted dying owe a duty to the public to be truthful about the details of killing and dying. People who want to die deserve to know that they may end up drowning, not just falling asleep,” he writes.

Nor is death necessarily quick.

In Oregon, where statistics are gathered about the mode of death, the median time to death throughout the 23 years of the Act is 30 minutes but the maximum time is 4 days and 8 hours. The median time for people to fall unconscious is 5 minutes, the maximum is 6 hours.

At least in the United States, doctors who participate in assisted suicides are aware of these issues. Dr Lonny Shavelson, a California physician who specialises in this novel field, has helped to organise the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying. This provides a forum for doctors to establish a best-practice for helping people to die.

It turns out that the very diseases from which the patients suffer can make the drugs less effective. Dr Shavelson spoke with Medical Xpress last year about some of the difficulties:

“Shavelson and [his colleague retired anesthesiologist Dr Carol] Parrot have identified which patients are more likely to linger, and can recommend adjustments. People with gastrointestinal cancer, for example, don’t absorb the drugs as well. Former opiate users often have resistance to some of the drugs. Young people and athletes tend to have stronger hearts and can survive longer with low respiration rates.

“We’re learning. Hypothesis, data and confirmation. This is what science is,” he said. “Our job is to stop the heart; that’s what they want us to do.”

His learning curve is rather ghoulish. He sits at the bedside of the person whom he is assisting to die with a clip board, noting the drugs, the dosages, oxygen levels, heartbeat, and breathing. Another California doctor says that he is grateful for Shavelson’s work. “It’s really helpful to have someone actually studying the utility of what it is we’re doing. So much of what we’re doing has arisen empirically. He’s collected such great data. Patients want a medication that is effective. They want a swift, peaceful death.”

Medical Xpress explains that “[Shavelson’s] pharmacologic findings, shared with clinicians nationwide, are dramatically reducing the incidence of long, lingering and wrenching deaths.”

Whoa!

What is this business of reducing the number of “long, lingering and wrenching deaths”? These have never been mentioned by “assisted dying” campaigners. What’s the point of changing the law so that a few cancer patients will escape a “long, lingering and wrenching” death at the expense of others who are going to experience it in the very process of assisted dying?

Little has been written about this issue – but enough to set the alarm bells ringing. A scoping review of “assisted dying” in Canada (MAID) published in BMJ Open last year found that complications “that may cause patient, family and provider distress” could be common.

“Of the 163 reports found, 40 described outcomes and complications in MAID provision. For intravenous administration, complications included difficulty in obtaining or maintaining intravenous access, the patient dying too slowly or not dying, patient dying too quickly, difficulty in pushing a large syringe, pain on injection, need for a backup kit and inappropriate drugs given. For oral administration, complications included prolonged duration of the dying process, vomiting, myoclonus/seizures, poor taste of the cocktail and the need for intravenous backup.”

And an Irish pharmacist stated bluntly in the BMJ in January that: “The process of assisted suicide and/or euthanasia cannot guarantee a peaceful, pain free, dignified death.”

Let’s be honest about “assisted dying”. Patients might die swiftly and painlessly. They might not. If it’s a game of roulette, is “assisted dying” really a compassionate option?

Care Not Killing Alliance campaign to oppose assisted suicide bill.

Dr Gordon MacDonald (CEO) of The Care Not Killing Alliance (UK) has asked supporters to contact members of the House of Lords to oppose Baroness Meacher's Assisted Dying Bill that is scheduled for Second Reading on October 22. Dr MacDonald stated the following:

There are many reasons to oppose the Bill at this stage that Peers might find it encouraging to hear about. It's best to keep your message short and in your own words.

Perhaps they might have read a recent Spectator article by Dr Joel Zivot? Last rights: assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified. It raised a number of questions about undignified and painful assisted suicides.

Or perhaps they might be concerned about the increasing pressure that the elderly will feel to seek assisted suicide so as not to be a burden on their family, friends, and caregivers.

There's also the concern that legalising assisted suicide would risk elderly patients being pressured into killing themselves by friends or families with ulterior motives that are unknown to doctors.

They might even be surprised by how openly some advocates of assisted suicide claim that one "benefit" would be saving hundreds of millions on care costs. Saving money should never be a reason to kill the old or vulnerable.

Article: Disability advocates say Assisted Dying Bill poses significant dangers for disabled people (Link).