Is MAiD Medical Murder? A Podcast Discussion

Podcast exposes red flags regarding MAiD in Canada

Viviana Runstedler
Staff Writer, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Christopher Shaw

*The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition refers to (MAiD) euthanasia as medical homicide.

We are pleased to share information on a podcast episode that exposes the truth about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada that mainstream podcasts avoid discussing.

On an episode aired July 17th 2026, the Children’s Health Defense (Canada Chapter) interviewed two medical professionals about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada. 

Dr Christopher Shaw is a neuroscientist and professor at the University of British Columbia as well as the co-chair of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Dr York N. Hsiang is a professor emeritus of surgery also at the University of British Columbia and a member of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Together, these two doctors presented a helpful overview of the current state of MAiD in Canada and shared eye-opening information concerning the ongoing execution of MAiD.

Dr York N. Hsiang

Dr Hsiang began by reminding listeners that MAiD is now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada and is an effective way to recoup healthcare costs. He briefly reviews recent discussions to expand Canadian MAiD approvals for mental illness and for minors. He went on to discuss issues within the current MAiD system.

One major issue presented by Dr Hsiang involves the misuse and misunderstanding of the drugs used in MAiD. The drugs used in Canada are essentially anesthetics used in very high doses to cause death. He referenced a 2022 article in the Canadian Medical Association journal that “only 21% of the physicians who are actively giving MAiD can be said to fully understand the drugs that they are giving for MAiD” (timestamp 8:30)

Dr Hsiang continues:

“about a quarter of patients took over an hour to die. And this is, clinically, this meaning you no longer have a heartbeat. Your brain could still be functioning, but you no longer have a heartbeat and so you are then deemed to be dead. The shocking thing is that when you actually look at the drugs that are being used, many of the drugs, in particular being the kill shot, the cardio-toxic drugs, in one quarter of those patients was not given. Why was that? Was that the reason why patients were taking over 1 hour to die? At the same time when MAiD is explained to be a painless procedure, less than one percent of the patients actually received a true medication for pain, in other words a narcotic. Very very surprising. And so, I have concerns that as the program gets expanded even more there’s going to be more practitioners that want to get on to this because it is lucrative and the majority of them don’t have any training. Nobody has training in how to kill a patient, our whole training is how to save a patient and keep them alive.” (timestamp 10:15)

Dr Hsiang is not the first doctor we have heard expressing concern about the administration of euthanasia and how the drugs may actually affect the person experiencing a euthanasia death. EPC has previously reported on euthanasia deaths which caused great distress to the deceased and family members present at the death. 

The National Post also covered this issue in 2022, recognizing that until euthanasia was legalized, doctors had never given doses this large of these particular drugs. The National Post article included a quote from Dr Joel Zivot suggesting that euthanasia could “feel like drowning” and that he “worries paralytics could mask an unpleasant death.” Zivot’s conclusions were based on his work studying capital punishment via lethal injection in the US which uses a common sedative to Canadian euthanasia protocol.

Another red flag that Dr Hsiang has identified in Canada is:

“physician zealots who contact family practitioner offices, and this I have heard from discussing this with family doctors, that they want to know on each family doctor’s list how many patients are eligible for MAiD. There is a financial incentive for these doctors since they are reimbursed quite well for a very short procedure.” (timestamp 9:08)

This quote highlights the pressure being placed on many Canadians to accept and utilize euthanasia. Discussion also turned to the Dying with Dignity Canada “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book” created for children. This child-centric material is especially dark considering the context of possible expansion of MAiD eligibility to impressionable minors.

Dr Hsiang and Dr Shaw also speculate that since euthanasia is used to facilitate organ donation, the expansion of eligibility to minors would increase accessibility to “younger” organs for donation and this may be a contributing factor behind these criteria expansions. We have covered several of these issues on the blog over the years; our posts related to organ donation can be found here.

Drs Hsiang and Shaw are currently working on a book about euthanasia, expected to be published next year. The portion of the podcast regarding euthanasia ends at timestamp 16:40. We thank these doctors for working independently of mainstream discussions to bring these issues to light in an open forum.

US Senators urge Health and Human Services to monitor assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Senator James Lankford

There are now 13 US states as well as Washington DC that have legalized assisted suicide. A press release from US Senators James Lankford (R-OK) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) to Health and Human Services  (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. urging HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) urges them:

to establish reporting requirements in the hospice program to monitor physician-assisted suicide for discrimination against individuals with disabilities, older adults, and other vulnerable populations.

The letter warned Secretary Kennedy that assisted suicide:

“raises significant informed consent issues as well as concerns about disability and age discrimination” and noted that the vast majority of patients receiving physician-assisted suicide are enrolled in hospice.

Senator Tim Kaine

The Senators further stated:

“We urge HHS and CMS to establish reporting requirements to monitor physician-assisted suicide for discriminatory practices and oversee compliance with federal funding restrictions within hospice programs. All hospice patients—regardless of disability, age or financial means—deserve compassionate end-of-life care that is free of coercion and discrimination.”

The Senators were joined by US Representatives Greg Murphy, M.D. (R-NC-03) and Lou Correa (D-CA-46).

Link to the letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (Letter Link).

Rep Greg Murphy

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) shares the concerns of Senators Lankford and Kaine and Representatives Murphy and Correa. We are particularly concerned with the formulation and use of poison drug cocktails for assisted suicide that are not approved as "safe" by The Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The letter from the Senators and Representatives states:

Physician-assisted suicide drugs are not approved for the purpose of ending human life. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved drugs indicated for physician-assisted suicide. These drugs would not meet the criteria as "safe" for the purposes of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Instead, medical practitioners prescribe drugs approved for other indications to be used "off-label" for physician-assisted suicide. As the Atlantic reported in 2019, "[I]n states where the practice is legal, state governments provide guidance about which patients qualify but say nothing about which drugs to prescribe." With "no government-approved clinical drug trial, and no Institutional Review Board oversight," physician-assisted suicide drug prescribers are left with little oversight in assisting end-of-life patients"

Rep Lou Correa

EPC is also very concerned about abuses related to the Assisted Suicide Funding Restrictions Act that essentially restricts federal funding for assisted suicide and protects the conscience rights for medical practitioners who object to assisted suicide. The letter from the letter from the Senators and Representatives states:

We request that you establish reporting requirements within hospice programs regarding physician-assisted suicide. In doing so, please consider monitoring physician-assisted suicide practises for the following:

• Discrimination against individuals with disabilities, older adults, and other vulnerable populations; 

• Proper disposal of unused medication and prevention of drug diversion; 

• Insurance denials of life-sustaining medical care that offer to cover physician-assisted suicide drugs instead.

There are many concerns with assisted suicide laws and the practise of assisting suicides. Some of the key issues include the lack of clear oversight and the use of lethal poison drug cocktails. The drug cocktails are concerning for their use but also the abuse the occurred with their experimental development.

Euthanasia complications challenge the "good death" narrative.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On May 27 an article by Brian Williams and Sharon Kirkey that was published by the London Free Press on May 27, 2026  reported on the euthanasia deaths by Dr James MacLean. 

Dr James MacLean is one of the few doctors to be sanctioned for unprofessional conduct related to his euthanasia deaths. One of the complaints included a euthanasia assessment that was done at a Tim Horton's coffee shop while another concerned a "botched" euthanasia death whereby MacLean declared the man dead, when he wasn't dead...

Sharon Kirkey wrote a difficult article that was published by the National Post on June 3, 2026 concerning euthanasia complications that challenges the "good death" paradigm that is sold by the euthanasia lobby. Kirkey wrote:

An Ontario man groaned, grimaced and repeated “help me” while undergoing doctor-assisted death after one of the drugs didn’t produce the anticipated level of sedation, initially leaving him conscious.

Kirkey suggests that people should be informed that some euthanasia deaths involve significant suffering.

Cases of MAID that do not proceed as planned were highlighted last week in media reports involving the 2024 death of Bradley Stewart, an Ontario man who resumed breathing after being pronounced dead by a London, Ont., family doctor and MAID provider — a traumatic experience his siblings who witnessed his mishandled death are still recovering from.

Brian Williams and Sharon Kirkey wrote in an article published by the London Free Press on May 27, 2026 that:

He’d (MacLean) ordered a MAID medication kit, but it wasn’t ready when he arrived at the pharmacy. He went to the home with a kit he already had.

According to the college, MacLean administered a sedative follow by propofol, a drug used during surgery that, in high doses, puts people in a coma.

The final drug customarily used paralyzes the muscles. Deprived of oxygen, organs shut down, one by one, until the heart finally stops. But MacLean was unable to find the neuromuscular-blocking drug in his kit.

MacLean declared the man dead, when he wasn't dead. He left the scene of the crime. He was then informed that the victim wasn't dead yet, so MacLean returned and pumped him with more lethal poison. 

The family was traumatized.

Kirkey also reported about another case known as “Mr. D.,” an 87-year-old man with congestive heart failure who died by euthanasia in 2023. Kirkey describes the euthanasia death.

The MAID provision took place at his home, the same day he was transferred home from hospital.

Once settled, two intravenous sites were established.

The doctor administered the first drug, midazolam, a Valium-like sedative. Next lidocaine was injected to numb the vein and prepare it for the next injection, propofol, a coma-inducing drug that can burn and sting upon injection.

Midazolam is meant to put people in a deep state of relaxation. People often fall asleep.

However, “During the first three minutes. Mr. D experienced signs of physical and psychological distress, including groaning, guarding (tensing muscles) and grimacing,” reads the case review.

“Mr. D did not experience expected sedation” from the midazalom and remained conscious.

“His behavioural signs of distress escalated to repeated verbalizations, including ‘help me’ that continued until sedation was achieved with propofol and a comatose state was confirmed,” according to the case report.

Kirkey explains that the family experienced significant distress related to their father's euthanasia death:

“These unfortunate end-of-life circumstances created profound distress for the family. They witnessed their father suffering with physical and psychological distress and these final memories stay with them.”

The family “shared reflections such as powerlessness to change the course of their father’s final suffering, anguish regarding the decision to support their father through the MAID process and immense grief and sorrow regarding their final memories with their father,” according to the case review.

Studies show that complications with euthanasia do happen. Kirkey reports:

In a survey of 335 Canadian emergency doctors, three reported having seen MAID patients come to emergency because of IV failure.

A 2022 study of 3,557 MAID deaths in Ontario and Vancouver between 2016 and 2020 found complications in 41 cases (1.2 per cent). Most fell into one of two categories, the authors reported: obtaining or maintaining IV access, or prolonged time to death requiring a second kit of MAID medications.

Kirkey further describes the death of Bradley Stewart. Stewart, had liver cancer, had fell unconscious three days before his death. Kirkey reports:

MacLean was called to the house three days later, after Stewart had become unresponsive. Stewart was surrounded by his siblings, family members and friends. His three chihuahuas were perched on his bed. MacLean injected midazalom and propofol. But missing from his briefcase was a third drug that paralyzes the muscles and stops breathing. After injecting the propofol, and unable to hear a heartbeat, he pronounced Stewart dead and left.

I questioned in my previous article, if MacLean used left-over drugs from a previous killing? After reading this article it is clear that MacLean used left-over drugs from previous killings.

Kirkey writes that the death had a profound effect on the family. The family was upset about the minimal penalty that MacLean received. Kirkey writes:

They’re angry that despite finding serious concerns with Maclean’s MAID practice — including a second complaint involving his assessment of a MAID patient outside a Tim Hortons — MacLean wasn’t brought before a disciplinary hearing by his licensing college. Instead, he agreed to a minimum of six months’ clinical supervision, among other voluntary undertakings. He is permitted to continue practising MAID.

“It literally was a slap on the wrist,” Townsend said.

“It shocks me because, in a lot of jobs, that’s the kind of action that would have got someone fired and yet they are literally saying it’s remediation,” Stewart-Mott said.

“They had the ability to suspend his doing MAID but never went down that road.”

Dr Ramona Coelho

Dr Ramona Coelho a London family physician and former member of the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario’s MAID death review committee. told Williams and Kirkey in the May 27 article:

“What is striking is not only the seriousness of the concerns identified in these cases, but the limited regulatory response,”

“The level of scrutiny and accountability applied to MAID is inconsistent with how other serious medical procedures are regulated,”

Dr Coelho commented on the notion that Canada's euthanasia law operates well.

The federal government “frequently points to the absence of criminal findings or disciplinary action as evidence that the MAID system is functioning safely,” she added.

“Cases such as these, along with those documented (by the coroner’s MAID death review committee) confirm that important gaps in oversight and accountability remain.”

The Chief Coroner of Ontario established the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee that published multiple reports underlining the concerns with the law. Even though that report found cases of people who had no actual medical condition or who died by euthanasia based on poverty or a lack of proper housing, none of those cases were then brought to the CPSO to determine if any sanctions should be applied to the doctors and nurse practitioners who caused those deaths.

MAiDed In A Funeral Home

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on February 20, 2026.

He Paid for the Drugs That Ended His Life

By Kelsi Sheren

Kiano flew from Ontario to BC to end his life with (MAID) euthanasia. The Dr. Who ended his life not only did it after another Ontario Dr, Dr. Tepper, wouldn’t kill him at MAIDHOUSE after his mother went to the media to stop the death.

Ellen[Wiebe] has a record of dancing on the line of “acceptable” MAID deaths.

“On Oct. 27, 2024 a British Columbia judge intervened to prevent Dr. Ellen Wiebe, or any other doctor, from causing the death of a mentally ill Alberta woman. Justice Simon Coval granted a 30-day injunction to the woman’s common-law partner, one day before her death was scheduled to take place at Wiebe’s Vancouver clinic. A civil claim alleges Wiebe approved the woman’s request for MAID after a single Zoom meeting and without consulting her doctors. Wiebe declined to comment when contacted by National Post.”

On December 11, 2025, pharmacy records show that 26-year-old Kiano Vafaeian filled a series of prescriptions at Macdonald’s Prescriptions Ltd. in Vancouver.

The prescriber listed on each receipt: Dr. Ellen Wiebe. The most prolific MAID “PROVIDER” in the country.

The NON FDA APPROVED FOR KILLING DRUGS dispensed were:

• Midazolam injection
• Propofol injection
• Rocuronium bromide injection
• Bupivacaine injection
• A line item labeled “1 MAID”

The drugs

Each receipt lists a “Patient Pays” amount. In total, the records show hundreds of dollars paid directly by the patient on top of the flight he took across the country and $300-495 he paid KORU funeral home to be killed there.

This combination of drugs is consistent with a standard intravenous Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) protocol in Canada. Midazolam is used to sedate. Propofol induces deep anesthesia. Rocuronium causes paralysis and respiratory arrest. Bupivacaine may be used in certain protocols. The medications are administered by a physician once legal eligibility criteria are met.

Nineteen days later, on December 30, 2025, Kiano Vafaeian died under Canada’s assisted dying death regime, but not at Ellen’s Willow Clinic location in Vancouver where normally she ends their life. This time it was much, much darker.

Kiano took himself, by himself to a FUNERAL HOME where he met Ellen. Koru Cremation in Vancouver to be exact. According to official documentation, the location of death was Koru Cremation in Vancouver — a funeral home.

The receipts raise a stark and uncomfortable reality: the medications used in assisted death are prescribed, dispensed, and financially transacted like any other pharmaceutical product. The documentation shows the patient paid for the prescriptions issued in his name.

Under Canadian law, MAID is a legal medical procedure if strict eligibility criteria are met. Mental illness alone is not currently sufficient to qualify. A patient must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition, be in an advanced state of irreversible decline, experience intolerable suffering, and possess decision-making capacity.

Kiano’s mother has publicly alleged that approval for MAID was based primarily on mental illness. Dr. Wiebe has publicly stated she has never approved a patient who did not meet all legal criteria.

Those are two conflicting narratives, pro death and pro life.

The receipts do not answer whether the legal criteria were properly applied. They do not reveal the assessment process. They do not explain how eligibility was determined.

What they do show is this. A 26-year-old young man with mental health issues and diabetes flew himself to a different province away from his family, obtained and paid for the medications used to kill him.

That fact alone forces a deeper question about the structure of Canada’s assisted dying system. When assisted death becomes a prescription, dispensed with a receipt and a debit transaction, what does that say about how the system conceptualizes suffering, autonomy, and medical responsibility?

Supporters and cowards call it “compassion and choice.”

People with two eyes and a brain call it abandonment and normalization of state sanctioned killing.

The documentation does not resolve that moral divide but it puts a clear line in the sand. It does make one thing undeniably clear. This was not an abstract policy debate, this was the killing of a 26-year-old young man who deserved real help, REAL healthcare and a system that wouldn’t let him fall through the cracks.

But what he got was a Dr who knows how to work the system, drugs that are NOT FDA approved for killing and a system who valued him more dead than alive.

It was a set of prescriptions.
A named physician.
A pharmacy counter.
A transaction.

And a young man who did not live to see the new year.

I called KORU to see if this was an option, unbelievably shocked how easy and dark it sounded “a provision” This is the dark country of Canada.

This appeared on Kelsi Sheren’s Substack and reposted with permission.

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).

Australian euthanasia activists arrested for assisted suicide death trafficking.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Luca Ittimani reported for the Guardian on September 15 that Australian Police charged Ian George Taylor, Brett Daniel Taylor and Elaine Arch-Rowe with aiding suicide in the deaths of at least two people and are being investigated over three Australian states in at least 20 deaths.

Even though Australian states have legalized assisted suicide, Taylor allegedly set-up a fake charity to obtain drugs that are used to euthanize animals for the purpose of aiding the suicides, for profit.

Ian George Taylor

Rex Martinich reported for AAP news on September 21 that:

Ian George Taylor, of Ashmore, on Friday faced Southport Magistrates Court on Queensland's Gold Coast charged with once count each of possessing and trafficking drugs.

Police allege Taylor, aged 80, trafficked animal euthanasia drugs on April 5, less than a week before his son, Brett Daniel Taylor, 53, allegedly helped a quadriplegic man to take his own life.

Brett Daniel Taylor

Martinich further reported that:

The Taylors and Southport woman Elaine Arch-Rowe, 81, were charged on September 15 following an investigation into the death of 43-year-old David Llewellyn Bedford at Hope Island on April 11.

Taylor is also accused of trafficking drugs in September when his son and Arch-Rowe allegedly attempted to aid an undercover police operative to kill themselves.

Elaine Arch-Rowe

An article by Greg Stolz that was published by the Courier Mail states that:

An undercover operative posing as a suicide candidate helped bust open a $12,000-per-dose euthanasia drug ring operating on the Gold Coast.

An ABC news Australia article by Alexandria Utting stated that:

Mr Taylor operated a business called End of Life Services, which according to its website helped to "plan and administer a loved [one's] passing", including preparing wills and enduring power of attorney documents.

Utting also reported that Elaine Arch-Rowe, 81, who was also charged:

She was formerly a coordinator of the Gold Coast chapter of Exit International, a euthanasia advocacy organisation.

Exit International is the group that is founded and operated by Philip Nitschke, the man who has been promoting the Sarco suicide machine.

Utting reported that Taylor had plans to grow his killing business:

In the documents, police alleged Mr Taylor told Ms Arch-Row in intercepted telephone calls that he would be the largest supplier of pentobarbital in Australia within 12 months.

Police alleged Mr Taylor also compared the selling of pentobarbital for assisted suicide to a "drug cartel" and planned to move the business overseas once he had made enough money.

Several articles suggested that Taylor and Arch-Rowe identified potential death clients by working with other euthanasia and assisted suicide organizations.

This case shows you the inter-connections between euthanasia organizations and activists on a world-wide basis. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will continue following this story.

Petition: The US Food and Drug Administration must investigate assisted suicide drug cocktails

To the FDA's Compounding Incidents Program, (Link to the online petition). (Link to the paper petition).

The petitioners draw your attention to the following:

Whereas the compounded drug cocktails being used for assisted suicide have had high rates of overdose, failure of expected pharmacological action, and adverse experiences associated with their use for assisted suicide; and;

Whereas the experiments that continue to be done to develop the compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide violate the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ regulations for the protection of human subjects under 45 CFR part 46;

Therefore, we call on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the adverse drug experiences with the compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide.

(Link to the online petition). (Link to the paper petition).

Information:

Despite claims that assisted suicide is a painless death, complications with assisted suicide remain common, and in fact have increased over the last decade. The FDA’s Compounding Incidents Program aims to protect the public against poor quality compounded drugs, yet no research has been done on whether the assisted suicide cocktails currently in use meet current standards.

An article by Manuela Callari published by Medscape on March 13, 2025, asked the question, “Do We Know Enough About Assisted Dying Drugs?” (1) Claud Regnard, MD, a retired palliative medicine consultant in the UK told Medscape:

“The amount of evidence supporting the use of these drugs is astoundingly small. The last study looking at efficacy and side effects was published 25 years ago, using data from 10 years earlier. 

“You wouldn’t allow this in any way with any other sort of drugs,” Regnard said. In a 2022 study, he found that drugs used for assisted dying have not undergone the usual level of scrutiny.(2)

The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of these drugs at high doses remain poorly understood. “We extrapolate from therapeutic doses, but we have no proper data on what happens at lethal doses,” Regnard said. “That’s not science—that’s guesswork.”

Based on the Oregon data we know that there are serious problems with the use of compounded drugs for assisted suicide. 

The 2023 Oregon Death with Dignity Act report indicated that the longest time for an assisted suicide death was 137 hours (five days plus 17 hours) and the assisted suicide complications rate was almost 10%. In Oregon, complications are only reported when a health care provider is present at the death. In 2023, there were ten known complications based on 102 reports from health care providers. (3)

Regarding the assisted suicide drug trials, JoNel Aleccia reported the following for The Seattle Times on March 5, 2017:

[Dr. Carol] Parrot and [Dr. Robert] Wood are part of a seven-member group of doctors in the Northwest who came up with the three-drug protocol after Valeant Pharmaceuticals Inc. acquired the rights to secobarbital, known as Seconal, in 2015 and raised the price sharply. 

“We wanted the new drug regime to be safe, reliable and effective—and cost $500 or less,” said Parrot.

Earlier in the article, Aleccia states,

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, used 67 times, has led to deaths that stretched out hours in some patients—and up to 31 hours in one case. (4)

Lisa Krieger’s article, published in Medical Xpress on September 8, 2020, also reported on the lethal drug cocktail trials:

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.” (5)

Doctors who participate in assisted suicide developed lethal compounded drug cocktails with human trials. The developers were concerned with the lethal efficacy and cost of the drug cocktail as opposed to the negative consequences associated with its use. The assisted suicide drug cocktail trials appear to have violated the Nuremburg Code.

We, the petitioners, call on the FDA to perform an investigation into the use of compounded drug cocktails used for assisted suicide based on the high rates of adverse experiences and into the experiments done to develop the assisted suicide drug cocktails that appear to have violated 45 CFR part 46.

References:

1. Manuela Callari, “Do We Know Enough About Assisted Dying Drugs?” Medscape, March 13, 2025 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/do-we-know-enough-about-assisted-dying-drugs-2025a100064q?form=fpf, accessed June 16, 2025.
2. Worthington, A., Finlay, I., and Regnard C. (March 10, 2022). Efficacy and safety of drugs used for ‘assisted dying’ British Medical Bulletin. 142:15-22. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/idac009
3. Oregon Death with Dignity Act 2023 report https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PROVIDERPARTNERRESOURCES/EVALUATIONRESEARCH/DEATHWITHDIGNITYACT/Documents/year26.pdf, accessed June 16, 2025.
4. JoNel Aleccia, “Northwest doctors rethink aid-in-dying drugs to avoid prolonged deaths,” The Seattle Times, October 5, 2017, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/northwest-doctors-rethink-aid-in-dying-drugs-to-avoid-prolonged-deaths/, accessed June 16, 2025.
5. Lisa Kreiger, “Doctors seek life-ending drugs that smooth the way for the terminally ill,” The Medical Express, September 8, 2020, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-doctors-life-ending-drugs-smooth-terminally.html, accessed June 16, 2025.

Physicians group urges New York Governor to veto assisted suicide bill.

Dear Governor Hochul,

My name is Dr Sharon Quick and I am President of Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF), an organization without religious or political affiliation that advocates for the vulnerable at end of life. I have expertise in pediatric anesthesia, critical care, and medical ethics. We oppose A 136. Please veto this poorly constructed bill.

Summary: A 136, like other medically-assisted suicide laws, inevitably violates (rather than upholds) patient autonomy; creates (based on subjective, often inaccurate, criteria) a class of marginalized patients with the disability of terminal illness from whom the standard of medical care can be withheld; allows lethal drugs to unnecessarily substitute for good palliative care and pain control; disproportionately preys on those with mental health problems and disabilities; and destroys the foundation of medical ethics, creating distrust among patients and the health care profession. In addition, A 136 is the most radical policy in the country because it has no waiting period for obtaining lethal drugs. It also has no residency requirement which could turn New York into an international assisted suicide tourism destination for one-stop lethal drug prescriptions. Will New York citizens have to pay for funerals and/or transport of bodies back to their home states and countries? The bill makes no provision for the fact that out-of-state citizens or non-citizens may be pressured to take lethal drugs immediately and they are not required to make funeral and burial arrangements.

1. Pain should never be a reason to seek lethal drugs. Complaints of excessive symptoms indicate doctors lack palliative care knowledge, such as when to refer to pain management specialists. Lethal drugs should never be a solution for lack of education. In addition, those in significant pain lack capacity to consent for lethal drugs. Instead, improve palliative care access and expertise, which has been assessed as likely insufficient to meet the needs of New York.1 There is evidence that minorities, the uninsured, those on Medicaid, and those living in disadvantaged communities may encounter barriers to receiving palliative care.2 It would be a tragedy for these under served populations if this legislation made lethal prescriptions more accessible than palliative care.

2. This bill has no waiting period to obtain lethal drugs; no other law is so rash. Immediate death does not give adequate time for appropriate discussion and interventions for vulnerable patients who make rash decisions out of fear, depression, embarrassment, subtle pressure by a tired caregiver who makes them feel like a burden, or other reversible or transient concerns. Such patients often change their minds and no longer want to hasten death.

3. Physicians may be wrong about a patient’s prognosis, and they often miss depression and compromised decision-making capacity. Patients in WA and OR have died up to 5 years beyond their original “terminal” diagnosis and receipt of lethal drugs. Neither mental health status nor capacity are required to be assessed immediately before a patient ingests lethal drugs, which could be years after initial assessment; there is no guarantee that patients are not compromised at that time.

4. Lethal drugs are not a proportionate means of achieving palliative care goals but devalue vulnerable patients in a way that violates the very goals palliative care aims to achieve. Assisted suicide is abandonment, not health care, and is not part of palliative medicine. Lethal cocktails are bitter-tasting, sometimes mouth-burning liquids, and patients must ice their mouths with popsicles and take anti-emetics just to get them down. Risks include nausea, vomiting, aspiration, seizures, and not dying. Palliative care can do far better.

5. Lethal drug prescriptions undermine autonomy and discriminate against the disability community. Requests for lethal drugs are not primarily for pain but because of depression and/or psychological responses to disabilities developed during terminal illness--which is itself a disability by both social security and ADA criteria. This bill grants new choices and power to doctors, not patients, allowing them to treat patients unequally, subjectively placing them into either (1) a protected group (getting standard mental health care) or (2) a marginalized group with the disability of terminal illness (who can be abandoned to lethal drugs). This discriminates against the disability community and undermines autonomy by violating equality of persons. New York does not need a two-tiered health system that devalues those with the disability of terminal illness.

6. The slippery slope is real. Patients with depression and those with non-terminal diagnoses of anorexia, hernia, arthritis, and “medical complications” have received lethal drugs. Hundreds of doctors’ and patients’ consent forms are missing in Washington and Colorado.

a. In 2023, Oregonian Cody Sontag decided to avoid advanced dementia by killing herself via voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (called VSED). An Oregon doctor declared her “terminally ill” due to dehydration from VSED. He waived the waiting period, prescribed lethal drugs immediately, and Cody died from them.(3) Dehydration is not “incurable” or “irreversible,” as legally required. How many others with non-terminal diagnoses have used VSED to access lethal drugs? No one—least of all physicians whom the vulnerable must be able to trust—should be granted god-like powers to decide which disabilities make life worthless, prey on those who lack capacity, and assist with termination of those so judged.

7. There is no mechanism to enforce the law or detect abuse, which is perhaps why no sanctions have been reported. The design of this bill, like other assisted suicide laws, is a set-up for undetected elder abuse, coercion, or murder, given neither capacity re-evaluation nor the presence a neutral party are required when patients ingest lethal drugs (sometimes weeks, months, or years after initial evaluation).

8. Doctors often devalue those with disabilities. Protect the medical profession from acting on that bias by not granting them power to assist the suicides of patients disabled by terminal illness—especially a bill that has no more oversight than Oregon, where physicians are not disciplined for ending the lives of those with non-terminal illness (like Cody).

9. Protect the medical profession from distrust, both between patients and their doctors and among doctors. Patients in the northwest who are opposed to assisted suicide now have legitimate fears that doctors might overlook depression or compromised capacity, devalue them, and prescribe lethal drugs if they request hastened death while depressed or in a moment of vulnerable weakness. A death request is often a plea for help, and people often change their minds about hastening death with time, treatment, and support. Dr. Bentz lost trust in colleagues after referring a patient to an oncologist who, over Dr. Bentz’ objections, gave lethal drugs to his patient instead of treating his depression.

10. This bill contains potential conscience violations for physicians and health care employers:

a. Requires falsifying the death certificate, naming the underlying disease as the cause, rather than the actual cause of death—lethal drugs (p. 12, lines 12-14)

b. It is unclear whether an objecting health care employer can prohibit physician employees from providing information about lethal drug provision or referring patients for them, or whether objecting physicians could be forced to inform or refer for this process, both of which would violate their conscience for participation in an unethical practice that is not medical care.

11. Finally, participants do not need to be New York residents, which may allow persons out-of-state (or country) to obtain lethal drugs. These patients may not receive adequate evaluation, especially of capacity and lack of coercion, by New York physicians who may not know them well. Non-residents would be pressured to take the lethal drugs immediately in New York to avoid legal complications from ingestion in their home state/country, when many patients hold on to the drugs for weeks, months, and even years, and some never take them. New York may become an international assisted suicide tourism destination.

Please veto A 136. I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Sincerely,
Sharon Quick, MD, MA (Bioethics)
President, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation (PCCEF)

P.O. Box 7122 Bonney Lake WA 98491 Tel: 253-501-7011 or info@pccef.org, www.pccef.org

1. CAPC. Palliative Care in New York. 2025. (Link)
2. Chambers B. How to Increase Awareness and Reduce Gaps in Palliative Care for MinoritiesJuly 9, 2020. (Link) (accessed 9-22-2024).
3. Pope TM, Brodoff L. Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2024: 1-7. (Link).