The deadly consequences of the Canadian medical assistance in dying (MAiD) regime have been put on display for a political readership in the US..Alexander Raikin, an Israeli-Canadian living in Washington, DC, penned a cover story on the topic for National Review and posted video clips of Canadian MAiD advocates in a thread on Twitter ("X"). .“On the same day that a patient enters into an optional written agreement with only one of his or her two MAID assessors, even if it is unsigned, without any witnesses and with no family members having been informed — the clinician can administer the lethal injection without asking for the final consent of the patient,” Raikin explained. .“The asterisk in the law is that the agreement is in place only as long as the patient ‘does not demonstrate, by words, sounds or gestures, refusal,’ or ‘resistance to its administration.’ If this demonstration is ‘involuntary’ and ‘made in response to contact,’ the death of the patient may still proceed.”.Raikin said an October 2021 online discussion by Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) was especially telltale..A smiling Ellen Wiebe, who has hastened the deaths of at least 400 people, passed on a question from ‘Debbie': “How would folks interpret someone who has lost capacity with a waiver in place and is now delirious, shouting, pulling their arm away as one tries to insert the IV to provide MAID?” .Wiebe said, “I’m guessing I would bring in one of their other providers, palliative care or whatever and get them sedated.”.Jim MacLean, who said he had performed MAiD more than 75 times since non-dying patients were included, said, “Everyone’s different. I mean, you try to deal with the situation, calm the room down, see what you can achieve through conversation and calmness.” .Chantal Perrot, co-chairman of a clinicial advisory council for Canada’s largest pro-MAID lobby group, seemed cautious about Wiebe’s suggested approach. .“If they’re sedated, then have we sedated them into being accepting of MAID?. That’s a whole other question,” she said..Kevin Reel, a senior ethicist at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto and former president of the Canadian Bioethics Society, also answered the question with a question of his own..“If what we’re doing by trying to honour the waiver is reducing distress for the patient and also for maybe even the family around them, would it be acceptable to do something similarly covert to keep them from reacting in that way? That might be away around it, but....” .MacLean interrupted to say he had taken that very approach. .“One waiver I did use, the patient was a little agitated. So we did give her some subcutaneous hydromorphone…before I did the MAiD…We did use it in that situation and it was very helpful.”.Wiebe said, “Good” and moved to the next question..Raikin suggested the first rule of medicine, “to do no harm” was deemed irrelevant in legalized MAiD jurisdictions. In Belgium last year, lethal injection failed to kill a 36-year-old woman with terminal cancer, so the doctor smothered her with a pillow. .“In New Zealand and Canada, suicidal patients seeking medical care for suicide prevention were prompted to consider assisted suicide instead,” Raikin explained..A Netherlands physician who sedated her patient into accepting euthanasia was found not guilty at trial. The judges said, ‘We believe that given the deeply demented condition of the patient the doctor did not need to verify her wish for euthanasia,” even though, as Raikin explained, “the patient repeatedly attempted to fight off her physician.”.MAiD goes from last choice to first choice, Raikin claimed..He wrote Canada will have 13 times as many euthanasias this year as it did when it began seven years ago. Belgian euthanasia is 12 times as frequent as in 2003, while Switzerland’s assisted deaths have doubled every five years since 1999..Raikin said he talked to many health care professionals in Canada concerned about MAiD trend. Many are in the process of exiting the profession, while those who remain face “demotion from leadership positions, censure from their colleagues and retaliation from their medical colleges.”.Some patients, although not terminally ill, told Raikin “that they want to live, but they feel they might not get the chance.”.As reported by Raikin, the CEO of Dying with Dignity said MAiD advocacy needed “the political will to speak out against Catholic institutions around MAiD.” Panelists at one event said practitioners should “recognize the harm to vulnerable populations that comes with the assertion of freedom of religion.” .By comparison, MAiD was called 'sacred.'.Pro-MAiD physicians were preparing to expand euthanasia to children, especially indigenous ones, who were “considered wise because they are closest to the ancestors.”
