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Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

bbc.com

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Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#3
"Nearly all of those who requested assisted dying - around 96% - had a foreseeable natural death. The remaining 4% were granted euthanasia due to having a long-term chronic illness and where a natural death was not imminent".

This is basically clickbait; the law is changing how people die of terminal conditions, but only a tiny fraction of those are deaths that really trace to the new law.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#5
post #3

"Nearly all of those who requested assisted dying - around 96% - had a foreseeable natural death. The remaining 4% were granted euthanasia due to having a long-term chronic illness and where a natural death was not imminent". This is basically clickbait; the law is changing how people die of terminal conditions, but only a tiny fraction of those are deaths that really trace to the new law.

The corollary to the article is that almost all deaths in Canada result from severe or chronic medical conditions .. and now 5% of those cases are resolved via voluntary euthanasia.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#6
post #3

"Nearly all of those who requested assisted dying - around 96% - had a foreseeable natural death. The remaining 4% were granted euthanasia due to having a long-term chronic illness and where a natural death was not imminent". This is basically clickbait; the law is changing how people die of terminal conditions, but only a tiny fraction of those are deaths that really trace to the new law.

> Palliative care and end-of-life care are excellent in Australia. They help the vast majority of people to die without excessive pain and suffering.

> However, in a small number of cases palliative care cannot relieve all suffering. Palliative Care Australia estimates this to happen to around 4% of people

So 4% would be exactly the amount of people this is relevant for

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#7
I find it overall very unnerving how quiet this is and how the Canadian press never really finds issues with this.

I often saw Japanese media moving lock-step with the police (in terms of vocabulary to use for certain crimes, how to report certain issues), and thought it was creepy as hell. However, the complete lack of questioning of the purpose behind a sudden legalization of euthanasia (in a country with public healthcare and an inherent potential conflict of interest), and the entire concept of having "experts" sign off on it without any legal overview is creepy.

Even using "medicalized" terms like MAID instead of euthanasia is unnerving to me.

Put in another way, given how hard it is for people to see doctors, I wonder how much worse it would be without MAID? As it would clearly be worse, is this a mere sanitized form of cost cutting to deal with growing medical costs associated with treating the aging population?

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#9
post #7

I find it overall very unnerving how quiet this is and how the Canadian press never really finds issues with this. I often saw Japanese media moving lock-step with the police (in terms of vocabulary to use for certain crimes, how to report certain issues), and thought it was creepy as hell. However, the complete lack of questioning of the purpose behind a sudden legalization of euthanasia (in a country with public he…

A person can't choose for himself when or even if to come into existence in this world.

In an era when human rights are considered sacred above all, it is hypocritical to me that a person can't decide for himself when he wants to quit.

Re: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

#10
post #7

I find it overall very unnerving how quiet this is and how the Canadian press never really finds issues with this. I often saw Japanese media moving lock-step with the police (in terms of vocabulary to use for certain crimes, how to report certain issues), and thought it was creepy as hell. However, the complete lack of questioning of the purpose behind a sudden legalization of euthanasia (in a country with public he…

Your whole comment frames MAID as something the gov't does to patients, not something patients choose as a better option than spending 6-12 months in agony with only one possible outcome.

MAID isn't a cost cutting measure. The cost of palliative care for the terminally ill is trivial.

It's not a loud issue in Canada because we've had decades of grappling with this (there's nothing sudden about it: google "Robert Latimer") and come to a humane solution: the near-term terminally ill can choose MAID, and a small number of long-term terminally ill can also choose it.

Without MAID, you'd have the same number of deaths, they'd just be medicated into insensibility for the last few months instead of making a conscious choice about it.

There's a legitimate fear in Canada about the misuse or abuse of MAID, especially amongst the disabled community (again, google "Robert Latimer"). But we've found zero evidence since its introduction of its abuse, of its application as a cost-cutting measure, of it being forced on people.

You shouldn't take the fact that something is working as designed, as sinister.

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