Live data from Hacker News

Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths

bbc.com

91–100 of 870 posts

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

#91
post #90
post #88

[flagged]

There are around 50,000 MAID deaths a year now. In the linked story, one employee was fired for making four veterans feel pressured to consider the option of MAID. This is obviously inappropriate behaviour, but also just as obviously an outlier. And the story you linked here is linked several other times in this thread. If this is happening monthly, there should be many more examples.

The problem with MAID is statistically significant.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/some-health-care-workers-...

But in Ontario, more than three quarters of people euthanized when their death wasn’t imminent required disability support before their death in 2023, according to data from a slideshow presentation by the province’s chief coroner, shared with AP by both a researcher and a doctor on condition of anonymity due to its sensitive nature.

Of people killed when they weren’t terminally ill, nearly 29% lived in the poorest parts of Ontario, compared with 20% of the province’s general population living in the most deprived communities, the data show.

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

#92
post #88

[flagged]

"Healthcare in Canada is essentially not available" is not the truth. It's not great. It's the worst it's ever been while I've been alive. My uncle recently passed and it's likely caused by an over worked medical system combined with delusional anti-government conspiracies. But it is not "essentially not available", there are many folks currently working their way successfully through our medical system, and coming out with improving outcomes.

Disability payments _are_ insultingly low, but we instead want to give a GST holiday and attempt to buy votes for our current government's inevitable loss.

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

#93
post #69
post #60

Theses headlines are always sensationalist, because it sounds like these deaths are avoidable. To be clear, all of these people were going to die within days, weeks, or at most a few months. Death is certain. Dignity at the end is the least we can ask for.

'pain-free' and 'organized' perhaps, but don't fool yourself, it's never 'dignified'. Makes me think of this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0606035/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu

I've rarely seen a less convincing argument than a quote from a TV show.

"Dignity" means different things to different people--such as "on my own terms". Your pithy dismissal doesn't capture any of that.

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

#94

During the recent debate around the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK, I listened to a radio phone-in in which a palliative care doctor explained that it wasn't possible to relieve all suffering for all patients. They relayed an example of a person who had spent their last days vomiting fully-formed faeces. If we can prevent five, ten or perhaps twenty percent of people having gruesome deaths, then not doing so feels lik…

Hard cases make bad law.

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

#95

During the recent debate around the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK, I listened to a radio phone-in in which a palliative care doctor explained that it wasn't possible to relieve all suffering for all patients. They relayed an example of a person who had spent their last days vomiting fully-formed faeces. If we can prevent five, ten or perhaps twenty percent of people having gruesome deaths, then not doing so feels lik…

"They relayed an example of a person who had spent their last days vomiting fully-formed faeces." Sounds like a fully-formed exaggeration. Vomiting once or twice a day is not spending your last days vomiting. More frequent vomiting? The supply could not possibly meet the demand. Especially if the patient stopped eating.

You are incorrect. You don’t have to be doing something 24 hrs a day to be spending your days doing it.

If you were a child who was raped every night by your father, you could absolutely say with honesty that you spent your nights getting raped.

What matters is - does the event significantly affect the rest of your day? Not - is the event happening non-stop. If that were the case, you could vomit every hour and still not be able to make the claim, since there are periods of rest.

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

#96
post #91
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are around 50,000 MAID deaths a year now. In the linked story, one employee was fired for making four veterans feel pressured to consider the option of MAID. This is obviously inappropriate behaviour, but also just as obviously an outlier. And the story you linked here is linked several other times in this thread. If this is happening monthly, there should be many more examples.

The problem with MAID is statistically significant. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/some-health-care-workers-... But in Ontario, more than three quarters of people euthanized when their death wasn’t imminent required disability support before their death in 2023, according to data from a slideshow presentation by the province’s chief coroner, shared with AP by both a researcher and a doctor on condition of anonymi…

The story here isn't about problems with MAID, it's about inadequate support for the poor and disabled. Even then, your link is about those patients requesting it, not about it being forced on them.

It's unsurprising to me that someone with few resources and irreversible, painful disability, but lacking an imminent death, would request MAID. I don't see how this is an argument against MAID.

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

#97
post #90
post #88

[flagged]

There are around 50,000 MAID deaths a year now. In the linked story, one employee was fired for making four veterans feel pressured to consider the option of MAID. This is obviously inappropriate behaviour, but also just as obviously an outlier. And the story you linked here is linked several other times in this thread. If this is happening monthly, there should be many more examples.

I know someone personally who was offered MAID. He had heart failure. Thankfully he refused. Fought the the system and got a heart transplant.

Its being abused in Canada. Its being used as an excuse to get rid of you. You're seen as a burden.

It was originally meant as a way for terminal cancer patients in terrible pain to die but in reality its offered as a way to get rid of you by medical profession.

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

#98
post #91
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are around 50,000 MAID deaths a year now. In the linked story, one employee was fired for making four veterans feel pressured to consider the option of MAID. This is obviously inappropriate behaviour, but also just as obviously an outlier. And the story you linked here is linked several other times in this thread. If this is happening monthly, there should be many more examples.

The problem with MAID is statistically significant. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/some-health-care-workers-... But in Ontario, more than three quarters of people euthanized when their death wasn’t imminent required disability support before their death in 2023, according to data from a slideshow presentation by the province’s chief coroner, shared with AP by both a researcher and a doctor on condition of anonymi…

Eugenics 2.0.

  When care becomes killing, we'll have no incentive to save. The weak and the poor are rushed to their graves

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

#99
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>> 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. > A strong argument for euthanasia always was that it would be exceedingly rare, but 5% of all deaths is not exceedingly rare. You talked right past the actual point being made, to beat a straw man instead. Being downvoted or shunned f…

> You talked right past the actual point being made, to beat a straw man instead

Your corolary, to me sounded like "It's not shocking at all that 5% of all deaths are euthanasia, it's simply the intended/logical outcome".

Maybe I created a straw man. For me the arguments, narative, claimed outcome, scope, implications and all that for allowing something like euthanasia matter a lot.

I hope we won't push back in horror at this measure like we did with other measures, because at that point the story could easily reach nazi Germany eugenics horror levels

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you protect the people who don't want to go, being pressured or manipulated. I agree that if someone is really, independently and committedly deciding to go, you shouldn't stop them. But how do you express that test in a bureaucratic, legalistic framework? I would look into countries where euthanasia has been already implemented. It doesn't seem like it's a widespread problem, so apparently they made it work…

> I would look into countries where euthanasia has been already implemented. That's what puts me off of the idea in the first place. Cases like Christine Gauthier (a former army corporal and paralympian) who was offered euthanasia when trying to seek government disability benefits to install a wheelchair ramp. If it takes someone with existing fame to speak out about this, how many more people has this been pushed on…

Should we keep medical assistance in dying illegal because bad eggs offer it outside the legal framework of their job in bad faith?

The Christine Gauthier case is used to justify the idea that the government will use it to reduce spending, when what happened to her is appalling, but was absolutely not something the government employee that offered it to her had the legal permission to do so.

What the Quebec law regarding medical assistance in dying does is guarantee its existence as a medical act. It does not allow any low-level government employee to offer it wily-nily to anyone. It is a medical act, reserved to doctors, to discuss assistance in dying.

Post reply on HN