An assisted dying group expects a new portable suicide pod to be used for the first time in Switzerland potentially within months to provide death without medical supervision, they said Wednesday.
The space-age looking Sarco capsule first unveiled in 2019 replaces the oxygen inside of it with nitrogen, causing death by hypoxia.
As we await the federal government’s release of Canada’s 2023 euthanasia data, last week British Columbia released it’s 2023 provincial euthanasia data.
According to the BC Medical Assistance in Dying 2023 report there were 2,767 reported assisted deaths, up by 10 percent from 2,515 in 2022.
It is concerning that “other conditions” represented 32.9 percent of the BC assisted deaths in 2023. Other conditions were reported under these categories:
Autoimmune Condition 2.4%, Chronic Pain 24.8%, Diabetes 9.8%, Frailty 60.5%, Other Comorbidities* 52.1%.
Frailty? Cripes they’ll be running over Granny and her walker at crosswalks soon.
For Wiebe, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is “incredibly rewarding” work. She hasn’t faced nearly the same sort of stigma she once faced as an abortion provider and says that while she and her MAID colleagues “all work within the law,” she’s also not as “conservative” as some.
Abortionist and “Mercy” killer. Quite a resume.
Tracy Polewczuk has spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause weak bones. Two years ago, she was in an accident and broke her leg. The injury never properly healed.
She says she lives in constant pain and relies on daily home care visits from the Pointe-Claire CLSC, but recently, she says the care has been getting worse.
“They don’t bother asking like they know your name, but they don’t address you. It’s just so impersonal, and they don’t care,” Polewczuk said in a recent interview. “You get up when they tell you to. You go to bed when they tell you. You do what they tell you to. That’s it. You have zero control over your life.”
The family of a Vancouver woman who was forced to transfer hospitals before she could receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) is suing the province of British Columbia and Providence Health Care, saying the health authority’s policy to ban MAID in its facilities violates patients’ Charter rights.
Gaye O’Neill, the mother of 34-year-old Samantha O’Neill, is the lead plaintiff in the case, along with Dr. Jyothi Jayaraman, a palliative care doctor who quit over Providence’s policy that bars patients from accessing MAID in its facilities.
Lisa, 40, is waiting to hear if she will be allowed to die. She is married and has two young children who don’t know she plans to end her life. There is just one more medication she has been told to try to treat her chronic depression, and then, she says, her request for euthanasia will be approved. The hardest part will be leaving her children, but she feels she has no choice. She plans to tell them, with the help of a grief counsellor, when she has set a date for her death.
“It’s not that I want to die, it’s that I don’t want to live this life anymore,” she says. “I’ve tried everything there is.”
A Calgary woman whose father has challenged her euthanasia request in court is starving herself to death and expects to die within weeks.
The 27-year-old autistic woman, who can only be identified as MV because of a court order, has asked judges to let her get a lethal injection — despite objections from her dad.
She’s now starving herself to death, and wants judges to greenlight her euthanasia request so she doesn’t perish in an ‘incredibly unpleasant’ manner.
Two years ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison Ducluzeau started to feel pain in her stomach. At first, she assumed she had eaten too much turkey, but the pain persisted. A couple of weeks later, she saw her family doctor who requested CT scans, although none were sorted. Soon after, as the agony worsened, her partner insisted she went to the emergency unit at their local hospital on Vancouver Island. Finally, doctors confirmed the couple’s worst fears: she was almost certainly suffering from advanced abdominal cancer.
Bastards.
A Canadian with a chronic, painful disability says he feels “pillaged” and “traumatized” after being denied good care, yet offered euthanasia “multiple times.”
Roger Foley, 49, shared his story with filmmaker Amanda Achtman as part of her series Dying to Meet You.
In the recently released BBC documentary Better Off Dead?, disability rights activist Liz Carr interviewed Dr. Ellen Wiebe, Canada’s most notorious euthanasia doctor. Wiebe is also an abortionist and an activist with Dying With Dignity, the euthanasia lobby group seeking to expand eligibility for assisted suicide in Canada even further. Wiebe’s attempted defence of Canada’s euthanasia regime backfired when throughout her interview, she laughed and smiled as she discussed ending the lives of patients.
A 29-year-old Dutch woman who has been granted her request for assisted dying on the grounds of unbearable mental suffering is expected to end her life in the coming weeks, fuelling a debate across Europe over the issue.
Zoraya ter Beek received the final approval last week for assisted dying after a three and a half year process under a law passed in the Netherlands in 2002.
Her case has caused controversy as assisted dying for people with psychiatric illnesses in the Netherlands remains unusual, although the numbers are increasing. In 2010, there were two cases involving psychiatric suffering; in 2023, there were 138: 1.5% of the 9,068 euthanasia deaths.
Amir Farsoud — whose sad story I shared with you in 2022 — won’t have to choose between going homeless or being euthanized by the Canadian government. This is what passes for good news some days.
A recent example of the use of medical assistance in dying (MAID) is setting off alarm bells. The CBC reported that Normand Meunier, a quadriplegic man from Quebec, was hospitalized in January for a respiratory virus. Mr. Meunier was left on a stretcher in the ER for four days despite communicating his need for a special mattress. He developed a severe bedsore with exposed bone and muscle, tragically leading him to seek out medical assistance in dying. Mr. Meunier told the CBC, “I don’t want to be a burden.” On March 29, he underwent assisted dying at home. The Canadian health care system’s failure to care for Mr. Meunier contributed to his death.
Suicide is a bit of a hit and miss affair. I can think of six cases of people I’ve known who’ve taken their own lives. One, a very successful business executive, threw himself out an office window; he survived the fall, only to hang himself a couple of years later. The girlfriend of a lodger survived throwing herself in front of an underground train: she left it too late and got blown back onto the platform, breaking a hip. She too, some while later completed the job by jumping off Beachy Head. A business acquaintance, having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s blew his brains out with a shot gun, literally, leaving his wife to clear up the mess. The girlfriend of another acquaintance killed herself when her boyfriend went off to university, only for the boyfriend, my acquaintance, to follow suit on the anniversary of her death. Finally, a university fresher I knew, depressed and alone in his halls of residence, killed himself during the first lockdown. Apparently a grim and drawn-out death. I blame Ferguson, Whitty, Boris and the other nutters for that one.
As a Calgary father’s legal battle to block his autistic daughter’s assisted death ignites debate over whether Canada’s euthanasia regime is expanding beyond what Canadians may be comfortable with, a new study suggests MAID deaths in Canada could continue to expand for another decade, until one in 10 deaths involve a doctor-administered lethal injection.
