A 38-year-old Canadian man was euthanized and his heart was donated to a 59-year-old American man with heart failure.This incident reflects a growing trend: “organs being harvested from euthanasia victims.”This is according to LifeSite, which reports the euthanized patient went through Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program, and had been suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), a nervous system disease, agreeing to donate the organs prior to his death.Between 2016 and 2021, 155 patients who were euthanized through MAID and donated their organs, according to the Transplantation Journal..The report from doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Ottawa Hospital in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation stated, “Death was declared within seven minutes of initiating the MAID protocol.”“The TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS) was used to reanimate, evaluate and transport the donor heart to Pittsburgh, USA, where the transplant took place.”“Provision of MAID and death determination occurred in keeping with Canadian standards. The end-of-life care plan is co-determined by the MAiD provider with the patient.”“The specific medications used for MAID provision are chosen by the MAID provider,” the report wrote..To be eligible for MAID in Canada, a patient must qualify for health services federally or provincially, be 18 years or older and mentally competent, have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition”, make a voluntary request, and get informed consent.However, there are known cases showing MAID providers have broken the criminal code when administering MAiD.As reported by Alexander Raikin and his investigative article on the Hub, few MAID cases are being reviewed.If nurse practitioners and physicians do not “submit necessary information on a MAID provision — or failure to inform a pharmacist of the purpose of the MAID prescriptions or to follow provincial guidelines — is also punishable by a prison sentence,” Raikin says..In the summer of 2023, Michael Bureau, the head of Quebec’s independent monitoring board, filed a public appeal that MAID cases in Quebec “are approaching the limits of the law.”The monitoring board’s annual 2023 report included a new category of MAID qualifying illnesses, including, “cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and other illnesses or disabilities.” They found 14 patients’ underlying diagnosis for MAID was not “grievous and irremediable illness as defined by Quebec’s law on MAID.”Ontario’s office chief coroner, Dirk Huyer, assigned by Health Canada and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to be the sole agency doing oversight for MAID, found in 2018: “a pattern of non-compliance, a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation.”.In 2018, Huyer sent a memo to healthcare practitioners in Ontario stating there were “some…compliance concerns with both the Criminal Code and regulatory body policy expectations, some of which have recurred over time.” “It only worsened since then. In 2020, his office identified 76 ‘issues with compliance,’ and in 2024 his office identified 428 ‘issues with compliance,’” Raikin reported.“These issues are significant. They stem from incomplete documentation of MAID requests to broken safeguards and potentially even non-consensual euthanasia.”With euthanasia organ transplants becoming increasingly common and successful kidney, liver, and lung transplants already performed — now, a successful heart transplant — there is an incentive to repeat the procedure..A Dutch study stated Canada has already become “world leader in ODE – organ donation after euthanasia.”The study also stated there were 286 instances of ODE leading up to 2021, 136 were Canadian.Not only is the MAID procedure not being followed in some cases — but ODE is also becoming increasingly popular in Canada.
