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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

#511

Post by elevaet »

My Mom escaped from some suffering by accessing MAID when the pain and suffering from her terminal cancer became too much for her to bear. She died in her own home surrounded by beloved family and friends, on her own terms.

I'm grateful that she was able to do this, and was spared a period of inhumane suffering at the end of her life.

It's hard and it makes me very sad, but I'm glad she could go this way. It would have been more difficult for her and everyone if she was forced to live through a hellish torture as cancer slowly took her life. In the end she beat cancer by taking herself out with it.

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

#512

Post by [deleted] »

person101x wrote: post #414
pcl wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to ask this in a non-confrontational way, so I’ll just come out with it: How do you square that with the modern Catholic church’s systemic support of sexual abuse of minors? I mean this in the most inquisitive way possible. An organization’s what it does; the modern Catholic Church (leaders) have supported some horrible things. How do you separate out the good bits from the bad bits?

For me it boils down to this: the Catholic Church exists as a body of members who are all sinners- laymen and women, priests, bishops, cardinals, and the pope included. The clergy are simply functionaries within the church who serve very important roles, but are not sinless, perfect humans by any stretch of the imagination. The way of life the Church offers along with its teachings, are what you might be able to cons…

[deleted]

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

#513

Post by refurb »

h1fra wrote: post #416

Euthanasia without good cheap universal healthcare is just a way to get rid of people in a sick society. Canada might not be the worst but their healthcare only cover 60-70% of canadians' need. And it's slowly getting worse with the private sector eating the market.

> Euthanasia without good cheap universal healthcare is just a way to get rid of people in a sick society.

For the government, this is a feature, not a bug.

A large percentage of health care costs are from the last year of life. Instead of expensive interventions the government can have patients volunteer to end their life, the savings would be significant.

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

#514

Post by lucubratory »

fatbird wrote: post #19
logicchains wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. It is something the government (or people working for it) have tried to push onto patients: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... .

"a now-suspended Veterans Affairs Canada caseworker.... which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker". One person. Not the gov't, not many gov't employees. One person who presented the option overzealously or inappropriately, leading to four people feeling pressured, out of, IIRC, 45,000 people annually choosing MAID.

A lot of people who could be asked about whether they've been pressured or felt society could have done more for them than killing them are no longer available to collect evidence from for some reason.

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

#516

Post by taatof »

guyzero wrote: post #470
notatoad wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>She passed, he called his doctor and less than a week later he was also dead. this doesn't sound right? MAiD has a 90-day waiting period. He had to have started that process before his wife passed, and just picked the date after she passed.

I completely admit I have a limited, second-hand account of the situation. It's quite possible that the circumstances were such that this was planned in advance of the wife's passing.

[flagged]

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

#517

Post by refurb »

fatbird wrote: post #19
logicchains wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. It is something the government (or people working for it) have tried to push onto patients: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... .

"a now-suspended Veterans Affairs Canada caseworker.... which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker". One person. Not the gov't, not many gov't employees. One person who presented the option overzealously or inappropriately, leading to four people feeling pressured, out of, IIRC, 45,000 people annually choosing MAID.

One person...that we know of. The fact this one person did this, contradicts your earlier statement of "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."

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

#518

Post by wpietri »

geysersam wrote: post #450
wpietri wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get that. Once you've accepted death is inevitable, you start to think carefully about what kind of death you want. My parents both died of glioblastomas, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. As the surgeon explained after the biopsy, "This is what you will die from." 3 months from diagnosis to death for my mom, a year and change for my dad. Seeing that process up close made very clear to me what I…

That must have been tough. May I ask what made them ill? The odds that they both got the same relatively rare disease by chance seems slim

Yeah, they were actually both left temporal lobe glioblastomas. Every time that comes up with a doctor they get a funny look and ask where they lived, obviously suspecting some environmental cause.

The short answer is people almost never know the cause of a glioblastoma. My parents only lived in the same place for like 6 years, and they moved around a fair bit. Nobody else in my family had one so far, so the next likely data points are me and my brother. Not a lot you can do anyhow, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#519

Post by karencarits »

mattmaroon wrote: post #394
guyzero wrote: post #131

My Canadian parents are in their 80's so naturally a lot of their friends of the same age are dying. And two of them have been via MAID. In one case, which was surprising to me, a man who had survived cancer - he was not terminal but certainly wasn't getting any better - elected to die via MAID after his wife died. She passed, he called his doctor and less than a week later he was also dead. He got a chance to visit…

I’ve never seen a sensible argument against the idea that somebody of sound mind shouldn’t get to decide when to check out for themselves.

There are many sensible arguments both for and against. BBC has a very short review of some main arguments for and against:

* For: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1....

* Against: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/against/against_1.sh...

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

#520

Post by BeefWellington »

voisin wrote: post #491
guyzero wrote: post #131

My Canadian parents are in their 80's so naturally a lot of their friends of the same age are dying. And two of them have been via MAID. In one case, which was surprising to me, a man who had survived cancer - he was not terminal but certainly wasn't getting any better - elected to die via MAID after his wife died. She passed, he called his doctor and less than a week later he was also dead. He got a chance to visit…

> he called his doctor and less than a week later he was also dead This is wild. How can they differentiate between grief and actual clear thinking desire?

This is actually not possible per the requirements set out in the legislation; I suspect the poster didn't get the full picture. It's always possible an individual doctor can ignore the system and do whatever but I doubt it when there's a legal path for this spelled out.

Grief on its own isn't sufficient for assisted dying.

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