MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

When the Canadian government passed legislation nearly a decade ago to approve medical assistance in dying (MAID), it was an exercise in compassion. A competent Canadian adult suffering from an “irremediable medical condition,” whose death was “reasonably foreseeable,” would no longer have to suffer; MAID would offer a way to avoid the unnecessary pain, the loss of dignity and the loss of autonomy that often comes with natural death. In narrow circumstances and with strict safeguards, MAID could expedite a process that was already occurring.

An American man dying of heart failure received the heart of a Canadian man with ALS who chose a medically assisted death in what is being described as a landmark case of a heart transplant following euthanasia.

Organs have been donated after MAID before, involving liver, kidney or lung transplants.

When Perry MacDonald heard that Canadian author Robert Munsch had requested Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) after his diagnoses with dementia and Parkinson’s disease, it touched a nerve.

Munsch recently explained to the New York Times that, under Canadian law, recipients of MAID must be able to actively consent on the day of their death. “I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it,” he said. If he waited too long, he added, talking to his wife, “you’re stuck with me being a lump.”

Members of Ontario’s government-appointed medical assistance in dying (MAID) review panel are raising concerns about doctors’ eligibility determinations under the expanded rules, noting that in some cases, patients qualified for assisted death after refusing available health care.

The review of three recent MAID cases has prompted “significant” discussion among members of Ontario’s MAID Death Review Committee, as some of the patients involved had conditions that could have improved if they had accepted care, according to the committee’s latest report, titled “Evaluating Incurability, Advanced State of Irreversible Decline in Capability, and Reasonably Foreseeable Natural Death.”

A severely obese woman in her 60s who sought euthanasia due to her “no longer having a will to live” and a widower whose request to have his life ended was mainly driven by emotional distress and grief over his dead spouse are the latest cases to draw concerns that some doctors are taking an overly broad interpretation of the law.

JOLIETTE – In nearly 30 years as a palliative care physician, Dr. Nathalie Allard has provided end-of-life care in busy hospital hallways, and consulted with families with only a curtain separating them from sick people screaming or vomiting on the other side.

On Thursday, she attended the opening of a brand-new palliative care facility northeast of Montreal that represents the kind of place where she wants to work and, one day, to die.

“It’s my workplace — and my final resting place, probably,” she said cheerfully while giving a tour. “Me, I’m going to die.”

A growing demand for MAID. From who and for what reasons exactly?

Almost half of Canadians who sought medical assistance in dying (MAID) in 2023 whose death was not reasonably foreseeable cited “isolation or loneliness” as part of their eligibility criteria, according to Canada’s annual report on euthanasia.

The Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada found that 21.1 percent of Canadians in the Track 1 category, where their deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” cited loneliness and isolation as a reason for seeking MAID. For Track 2, that number was 47.1 percent.

In the brilliant book MASH, by Richard Hooker (real name H. Richard Hornberger), Captain Walter “The Painless Pole” Waldowski, a brilliant, handsome, and priapic surgical dentist, suffers from what today would be diagnosed as bipolarism, periodically becoming deeply depressed. His doctor friends offer him the ultimate suicide, complete with a huge party and a painless final shot. In fact, it’s a con, for they simply knock him out to help him sleep off his depression, and they even give the well-endowed dentist a blue ribbon award while he sleeps. All ends well.

Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert, recently disclosed that he had planned to end his life due to the pain of his untreatable cancer. In May, he announced that he only expected to live a few more months. At the time, alternative treatments were no help.

He scheduled his suicide for June 29.