MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Netherlands programs have euthanized otherwise healthy individuals with autism and intellectual handicaps in recent years, researchers have found.

Five individuals under the age of 30, who cited autism as a factor in their decision to seek legal euthanasia, are among the cases reviewed by specialists at the U.K.’s Kingston University.

I’m sure Canada’s Suicide Saviors will top that shortly.

It’s an ethically fraught scenario that’s becoming more common as the number of Canadians granted euthanasia grows: People pursuing assisted suicide are asking to donate one or more of their functioning organs upon their death to someone they know.

Princeton University scholar Peter Singer is under fire for promoting euthanasia for adults and even sick newborns as he touts his new book on a tour of the US, Britain, and Australia.

Singer, 76, one of the world’s top living philosophers and an animal rights champion, has stoked fury with his recent vocal support for doctor-assisted killings, including for infants born with terminal conditions.

Critics have slammed Singer’s comments as ‘dangerous eugenics,’ accusing the Australian of undermining the terminally ill and disabled by suggesting they are better off dead.

History shows academics were ardent Nazis.

There is nothing to stop an assisted suicide regime once it has been put into place

Lonnie VanHook was preparing to board the train to Oregon when his body gave out. The Navy veteran is accustomed to these sorts of betrayals. He is quadriplegic and legless to boot; a rare form of cancer is eating away at his skeletal-muscle tissues and bladder. He awoke in a facility surrounded by medical professionals wearing the plastic countenances of concern and sympathy they picked up during the med school lessons on bedside manners. During the interaction, Lonnie told them about the reason for his upcoming trip. You can picture the Oakland native rolling his eyes as he has prepared for the rebuttal. The doctors, no doubt, exchanged astonished glances. Lonnie, what were you thinking?!? You don’t need to take the train. We can do that right here!

A new sci-fi film makes a poignant case against assisted dying.

Plan 75 is a new sci-fi film, directed and co-written by Chie Hayakawa. It is set in an alternate version of present-day Japan, in which the authorities have come up with a solution to the ‘problem’ of an ageing population. This solution, called Plan 75, involves encouraging citizens over 75 years old to sign up for an assisted death in return for $1,000.

The cases have drawn international criticism: People in Canada with non-terminal conditions choosing a doctor-assisted death after a fruitless search for better housing or proper medical care.

But a new paper by two University of Toronto bioethicists argues that, while the decisions may be “deeply tragic,” it would be wrong to deny medical assistance in dying (MAID) to people whose request is being driven most of all by poverty or other unjust conditions — “people who not only might, but have explicitly said” they would prefer not to die.

Monsters.

A few weeks ago the Dutch parliament announced that euthanasia will be licensed for children between the ages of one and 12, for cases involving ‘such a serious illness or disorder that death is inevitable, and the death of these children is expected in the foreseeable future’. The coverage of this latest development was eerily muted, considering the enormity of what had just been communicated; namely, that a European liberal democracy had deemed it appropriate for seriously sick infants and primary school-aged children to receive lethal injections.

Meanwhile, over in Canada, two months prior to the Netherlands’ latest decree, a parliamentary committee recommended that Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) should be extended to ‘mature minors’.