Orange Immortal [64445]

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G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Oct 14, 2024, 4:02 PM

I went for a mastectomy and they offered me assisted dying, Canadian cancer patient reveals
Patient asked about ‘medical assistance in dying’ as critics say euthanasia has spiralled out of control

Cameron Henderson
Related Topics
Breast cancer, Assisted dying, Canada, North America
14 October 2024 1:57pm BST

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A woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery in Canada was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room.

The case comes as the number of people opting to end their lives under the country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program has risen thirteen-fold from 1,018 to 13,241 in 2022.

Assisted dying, which was legalised in Canada in 2016, is now the fifth-leading cause of death in the country.

The case will sound alarm bells in the UK, where a bill on assisted dying is set to be brought forward in parliament this month. If it passes, it would pave the way for the practice to be legalised.

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Although details of the British bill have not yet been finalised, it is expected to propose granting terminally ill adults who have six months or less to live access to medical help to end their own lives.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “very pleased” that MPs will get the chance to vote on the issue. It will be a free vote and the Government will remain neutral on the subject, but the Prime Minister has previously supported an assisted dying bill and said that he thinks there are grounds for changing the law.

Canada now has the fastest-growing assisted dying program in the world. Only the Netherlands has a higher rate of such deaths.

The increase in deaths has sparked fears disabled and unwell people with complex needs are being put under pressure to choose to end their lives.

‘I was scared and alone’
Speaking anonymously, the 51-year-old cancer patient said of the moment she was offered death instead of surgery: “It floored me... [it was] the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt in my life”.

The patient, a married grandmother from Nova Scotia, explained she was set to undergo a mastectomy operation for breast cancer when a physician asked her if she knew about medical assistance in dying (MAID).

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“I was sitting in two surgical gowns, one frontways and one backwards, with a cap on my hair and booties on my feet. I was shivering and in a hard plastic chair and all alone in a hallway,” she said in a video for the Christian Medical and Dental Association.

“The [doctor] sat down and went through all the scary things with me. Then he asked ‘Did you know about medical assistance in dying?’

“All I could say was, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’.

“I was scared and I was alone and I was cold and I didn’t know what was coming.

“Why was I being asked about assisted dying, when I was on my way into what I truly believe was life-saving surgery?”

The grandmother, a store manager, has struggled with lupus, fibromyalgia and migraines since she was a child, but has always managed her disabilities.

In September 2022 she found a lump on her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer, with her first mastectomy to take place the following month.

Despite declining the offer of the MAID program, the woman was asked about assisted dying again before undergoing her second mastectomy nine months later and spoken to a third time while recuperating in the recovery room after that procedure.

‘Better off dead’
She said the repeat offers made her feel like a burden to doctors and that people in her position “were better off dead”.

“I felt like a problem that needed to be [gotten] rid of instead of a patient in need of treatment.

“I don’t want to be asked if I want to die,” she added.

Multiple Canadian medical professionals have told The Telegraph that this is not an uncommon situation.

“The law does not prohibit it, and campaign groups have argued that [assisted dying] should be offered to anyone who could be eligible,” explained Trudo Lemmens, professor of law at the university of Toronto, who has testified before Canadian parliamentary committees on the introduction of MAID.

The speed with which assisted dying has been hastily expanded in Canada serves as a warning about the danger of legalisation becoming a slippery slope.

“I think people in the UK should be very cautious,” Trudo Lemmens, professor of law at the university of Toronto who has testified before Canadian parliamentary committees on the introduction of MAID.

“If we were to talk about those rates with any other cause of death, this would be a national catastrophe,” said Alexander Raikin, a bioethics expert at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre.

One major cause for concern is the impact of assisted suicide on people with disabilities. A coalition of Canadian disability rights organisations mounted a legal challenge last month opposing the expansion of MAID to include the disabled, which they claim has resulted in premature deaths and an increase in discrimination towards people in the community.

Restrictions loosened
When assisted suicide was first legalised in Canada for those with terminal illnesses, officials said the new law could be expanded in the future, and restrictions have since been loosened several times.

The following year, an Ontario judge issued a ruling allowing MAID to be offered to those with chronic conditions such as arthritis.

Since the 2021 law changes expanding the rules to cover those with disabilities, doctors and patients have accused lawmakers of moving too quickly and creating ethical problems.

“They basically turned medical assistance in dying into euthanasia on-demand,” said Prof Lemmens, who described legalisation as “opening Pandora’s box”.

However, while some have called for restraint, others are pushing to open the floodgates wider still.

Dying with Dignity, the campaign group whose sister organisations are heavily involved in lobbying the US and the UK governments, last year advised a Canadian parliamentary committee that recommended expanding assisted dying to include minors.

The group counts Dame Prue Leith among its UK ambassadors.

Another group, the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, has provided advice to clinicians recommending that people with disabilities who voluntarily stop eating and drinking should be entitled to assisted dying without delay.

Some provinces have gone further still. In Ontario, there is a 24-hour MAID hotline, while in Quebec — the place with the highest rate of assisted suicide in the world at 7.3 per cent of all deaths — the local government has pledged to forge ahead with plans to introduce advance requests for assisted suicide from Oct 30.

The law change will permit people who develop serious incurable illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease to ask for an assisted death, with the procedure being carried out after their condition has worsened.

The prevailing narrative surrounding the legalisation of assisted dying remains one of overwhelming positivity, with high-profile celebrities such as Dame Esther Rantzen, who slammed UK law as “cruel” and a source of “terrible suffering”, lending their voices to the cause.

However, medical experts and patients have warned that blind optimism surrounding assisted dying has allowed it to be used to mask the cracks in Canada’s crumbling healthcare system.

Figures show that around a quarter of Canadian adults do not have a family doctor. There is also an acute shortage of palliative care spaces, with hospices containing just over half the number of beds needed.

The cancer patient who was offered the programme before her mastectomy has been waiting for an appointment at a specialist pain clinic for the past year. “However, if I were to call the MAID hotline this morning, I’d be talking to a doctor tomorrow afternoon,” she said.

Dr Leonie Herx, a palliative medicine consultant in Calgary, said that staff-shortages are so bad in some Canadian hospitals that patients who are not at risk of imminent death are offered MAID before they’ve even had a chance to see a palliative care consultant.

In one instance, she claimed that one of her patients saw a MAID consultant first, and when she came back to check on him the next day, he had already been given an assisted death.

“In some cases, MAID has become the only therapy provided, which is completely horrific from a medical perspective,” Dr Herx said, in what will serve as a stark warning to the UK, where the NHS is facing a £37 billion funding gap with acute shortages in palliative care.

“The wheels of benefits and support turn too slow and the wheels of MAID turn too fast,” the cancer patient said. “That is simply the situation we’re in right now as a society that considers itself progressive.”

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oh_its_JimmyHEYHEY® said:

People, especially those with permanent, tragic medical conditions (i.e. locked-in syndrome) should have that right.

But danged if MAID did not fulfill every. single. warning. about such systems. Absolutely ghoulish.

I would agree that in some cases active euthanasia should be legal if adequate guardrails such as a fairly sizable group of doctors had to sign off on this.

Additionally, offering this for mental disease should be a nono for many reasons and counseling people in poor economic conditions that euthanasia may be something to consider should never ever be a part of the equation.

The situation in Canada is very loose and very unsettling.

On locked in syndrome, I would totally agree. I once took care of a woman in her 40's with this and after much discussion convinced her daughter not to treat a UTI that ultimately led to the woman's death accompanied by enough sedation to make her comfortable.

Passive euthanasia occurs multiple times daily in this country with a wink here and there and this is being kind to withhold care when there is no hope.

A huge problem is still not enough emphasis on palliative care although this is much improved from past years.

Active euthanasia is something not to be entered into lightly or meant to be expansive in its use. It's a shame there can't be a limited role for it in this country, as we treat our pets better than our human loved ones, but I have great fear that it would be abused.

G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Because 2 countries give choices?

Also consider that in spite of what you've posted (no idea if true or not)

Less illegals murdering people I guess. Less fentanyl?***

Less people shooting each other

Canada also doesnt allow a ton of garbage in their food.

Its the same as a plethora of other issues

Do what?

My dad was given 7 months and made

Re: My dad was given 7 months and made

Super happy to hear that about your dad

Catering to the mentally ill? What does that mean?

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

An offer isn't the same as coercion. FYI.***

Let's put this into context

Yes, it would be and rightfully so. In keeping with the contextual theme here

Youre making the assumption that its only being offered to terminal

I agree. I mean, I'm not opposed to said offering but do strongly agree

Maybe for basic medical care, but anything more complicated I would not want to

Re: Let's put this into context

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

I've never heard anything good about the Canadian healthcare system

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Lol do you know what "obamacare" is?

Re: Lol do you know what "obamacare" is?

You pass on all tax credits and deductions?***

Re: You pass on all tax credits and deductions?***

Re: Lol do you know what "obamacare" is?

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

UKs life expectancy is two years longer than the US

Re: UKs life expectancy is two years longer than the US

Re: UKs life expectancy is two years longer than the US

Re: UKs life expectancy is two years longer than the US

Or G-d save us from 400 million guns in America

Soylent Green.***

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

The Right to Die is perhaps one of the most fundamental rights to self-autonomy.

Re: The Right to Die is perhaps one of the most fundamental rights to self-autonomy.

Re: G-d save us from socialized healthcare:

you triggered the Rats***

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