Cuba approves law for ‘death with dignity’. What could possibly go wrong?

This article was published by Mercatornet on January 12, 2024.

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

 

On the Friday before Christmas, the Cuban parliament passed a new health law acknowledging the right of terminally ill Cubans to refuse to artificially prolong their lives or to opt for a “dignified” death.

The legislation, unanimously approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power (Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular), will come into effect when regulations for its implementation have been approved by the Ministry for Health.

The new law recognizes individuals’ right “to access a dignified death through the exercise of determinations for the end of life, which may include limiting therapeutic efforts, continuous or palliative care, and valid procedures to end life.” The procedure specifically mentions patients with degenerative and irreversible chronic illnesses who are experiencing unbearable suffering in the terminal phase of life.

In plain speech, Santa Claus brought Cubans euthanasia as a Christmas present.

According to Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, president of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, this law legitimizes a right which was debated during discussions leading up to the 2022 approval of the Family Code, which legalised same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption and altruistic surrogacy.

The recent “debate” in the National Assembly consisted mostly of bouquets to the wisdom and eloquence of its authors. Dr Taymí Martínez Naranjo, a member of the government’s inner cabinet, the Council of State, was glowing in her praise of this essentially pro-life measure. It affirms, she said:

“the right of individuals to access a dignified death through the exercise of determinations for the end of life, and to decide on the course of their illness based on the bioethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. Today, we are discussing a law that places respect for the lives of human beings and their most important right at the centre: the ability to decide.”

It comes as something of a surprise that a Marxist country like Cuba with ostensibly strong communitarian values should opt for euthanasia. But the first state in the world to legalise euthanasia was Soviet Russia, in 1922 – although it rescinded the law after a few months to avoid abuse.

Cuba may be the poorest country to legalise the right to die and is certainly the first authoritarian regime to do so. This could lead to problems, as bioethics commentator Wesley J. Smith noted sardonically in the National Review:

“Swell. Cuba is a very poor country with people having access to general practitioners, but the country is plagued by medicine shortages and run down facilities. Indeed, according to the Miami Herald, poor access to medical care is one reason Cubans immigrate or flee the country.

Poor quality care and socialized medicine are a toxic combination, perhaps even leading to people being driven to euthanasia or lethal jabs becoming a substitute for care, both of which appear to be happening in Canada.

Then, there is the possibility of euthanasia being used as a cover for political murders in a ruthless tyranny. Hey, what happened to that political dissident? Oh, he asked for “death with dignity.” Aww, compassion!

More articles on this topic:

• Cuba legalizes euthanasia (Link).
• Cuba quietly legalizes euthanasia (Link).

Court rules that assisted suicide is suicide.

This article was published by Bioedge on December 7, 2023.

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

Such is the stigma surrounding suicide that advocates of “voluntary assisted dying” insist vehemently that it is by no means suicide.

For instance, Go Gentle Australia, a leading lobby group for VAD, explains in its website’s FAQ that:

“People seeking voluntary assisted dying are not suicidal; they don’t want to die but are dying of a terminal illness and simply want to control how and when it happens and how much they need to suffer at the end. Australian laws expressly state that voluntary assisted dying is not suicide.”

In Australia, this is more than a quibble over words. In 2005 the Federal government amended the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995. It introduced two sections which criminalised counselling or instructing people about suicide over “carriage services”, which included communication over telephones and the internet.

It had good reason to do so. Access to the internet was growing, young people were being bullied or coaxed into killing themselves in internet chatrooms. Introducing the bill at the time, the Attorney-General explained that “internet chat room discussions have led to a person attempting suicide, and sometimes successfully. This research points to evidence that vulnerable individuals were compelled so strongly by others to take their own lives that they felt to back out or seek help would involve losing face.”

Chatrooms in Japan were particularly gruesome. In 2003, NBC News reported that strangers were organising suicide pacts over the internet. In one shocking case, four young men organised to gas themselves in a car overlooking Mount Fuji.

Furthermore, Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian assisted suicide promoter and facilitator, began providing information about suicide techniques over the internet. At the time, the changes were even dubbed “the Nitschke amendment”.

However, after all of Australia’s states have legalised VAD, the Federal criminal code has become, in the words of advocates, a barrier to access, because it equates VAD with suicide. People who want to access VAD in rural areas may not be able to find a local doctor who is prepared to cooperate. For other medical consultations, they would be able to speak over the phone with a specialist. But for VAD, such a consultation would be a crime. It purportedly causes “delay and hardship for patients”.

So a doctor from Victoria, Nicholas Carr, recently asked the Federal Court to rule that “voluntary assisted dying” is not suicide. The judge, Justice Abraham, refused.

After a long examination of the relevant legislation and parsing the word “suicide”, she concluded that:

“in so far as the VAD Act purports to authorise medical practitioners to provide information about particular methods of committing suicide via a carriage service, it purports to authorise them to engage in conduct that the Criminal Code has criminalised.”

Taking a common sense approach to the definition, Justice Abraham consulted Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. They supported her stand. Suicide is “the intentional taking of one’s own life, and the act of doing so” and therefore VAD is suicide.

Dr Carr’s lawyers had another argument, an ingenious one. The Federal legislation bans incitement “to commit suicide”. The word “commit”, which is associated with committing a sin or committing a crime, must obviously mean that only stigmatised species of suicide are banned.

Justice Abraham dismissed this objection. 

“There is no basis to infer, from the text, context or purpose of the provisions that the word ‘commit’ was chosen by Parliament to denote that the term ‘suicide’ only applies to certain circumstances in which one takes one’s own life.”

When there is a clash between state and Federal law in Australia, Federal law prevails. For the moment, no one in Australia can use a telephone or the internet to give advice about VAD. It may be difficult to draft a law which will allow doctors to give advice about “voluntary assisted dying” but will stop people from encouraging unbalanced and distressed people to end their lives.

Record numbers of Canadian euthanasia deaths.

This article was published by Mercatornet on November 3, 2023.

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

In 2022, 13,241 Canadians died through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) – 4.1% of all deaths. 

• Health Canada reports 13,241 assisted deaths in 2022 representing 4.1% of all deaths (Link).

The advance of MAID has been astonishing. Since euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalised in 2016, there have been 44,958 MAID deaths. About one Canadian in 25 dies after a lethal injection. It took Belgium and the Netherland about 20 years to reach this level of normalised euthanasia – it has taken Canada only seven years.

Bioethics commentator Wesley J. Smith noted in a column in the National Review that: 

“If the same percentage of people were killed by doctors in the USA as are in Canada, that would amount to about 140,000 homicides annually. That’s about as many people as live in cities such as Waco, Texas, or Fullerton, Calif.”

Canada’s Minister of Health, Mark Holland, said in a preface the 2022 statistics that: 

“we continue to advance core principles of safety, accessibility, and the protection of persons who may be vulnerable, throughout the MAID system.”

What he fails to do is set an upper limit on euthanasia deaths. How many is too many for Canadian supporters of MAID? Will it level off at 10%? At 15%? At 25%? Next year could see a big jump in MAID deaths, as euthanasia for mental illness will become available. Will the next step be involuntary euthanasia for people with dementia?

Here are some of the highlights of the Ministry’s fourth annual report. 

• The number of MAID cases grew by 31.2% over 2021.
  
• More males (51.4%) than females (48.6%) received MAID.
• The average age of individuals at the time MAID was provided in 2022 was 77.0 years. Only a small percentage was between 18-45 (1.3%) and 46-55 (3.2%).
• Cancer (63.0%) is the most cited underlying medical condition for MAID, followed by cardiovascular conditions (18.8%), other conditions (14.9%), respiratory conditions (13.2%) and neurological conditions (12.6%).
• MAID for patients whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable was only legalised in 2021. In 2022, 3.5% of the total number of MAID deaths (463 individuals), were individuals whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable. This is an increase from 2.2% in 2021. The most cited underlying medical condition for this population was neurological (50.0%), followed by other conditions (37.1%), and multiple comorbidities (23.5%).
• In 2022, the most commonly cited sources of suffering by individuals requesting MAID were the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities (86.3%), followed by loss of ability to perform activities of daily living (81.9%) and inadequate control of pain, or concern about controlling pain (59.2%).
• The number of MAID providers is growing. During 2022 there were 1,837, up 19.1% from 2021. 95.0% of all MAID practitioners were physicians, while 5.0% were nurse practitioners. However, the number of nurses providing MAID is growing. Nurse practitioners performed 9.4% of all MAID procedures, up from 8.4% in 2021 and from 7.0% in 2019. 
• As MAID becomes socially normalised, doctors are doing them more frequently. In 2022, the average number of MAID provisions per practitioner was 7.2, compared to 6.5 (2021), 5.8 (2020) and 5.1 (2019).

Recent stories on Canada's euthanasia law:

• Euthanasia for drug addicts is an outcome of euthanasia for mental illness (Link).
• MAiDhouse kills 125 people in 2022 (Link).
• Canada's MAiD program has gone mad (Link).
• Has Canada's euthanasia law has gone too far (Link).

Nitschke's suicide business gets US tax-deductible status.

This article was published by Bioedge on August 24, 2023.

By Michael Cook

Americans can now get a tax-deduction for promoting assisted suicide. The world’s best-known assisted suicide activist, Australia’s Philip Nitschke, has drawn the curtains on a 501(c)3 non-profit called Exit Generation.

Donations, bequests, gifts will be tax deductible to the full extent of the law. Dr Nitschke says that “Exit Generation shares the same board as Exit International & will ensure that Exit has a truly international presence now, & in the future.”

The new venture’s first focus is developing the Sarco 3D-printed euthanasia capsule in Switzerland and then making it available in other countries. Sarco is Dr Nitschke’s brain-child – a 3-D printed capsule in which a customer can kill himself by inhaling nitrogen. The pod can then be used as a cost-saving coffin.

Nitschke has designed other suicide machines in the course of his career, beginning with the “Deliverance Machine” which was used patients in the Northern Territory in 1996. It is now on permanent display in the British Museum.

More article on Philip Nitschke.

• Teens' Parents sue Amazon for Selling "Suicide Kits" (Link). 
• Concern with the growth of radical assisted suicide groups (Link).
• Death capsule is designed to undermine societal resistance to suicide (Link).
• Philip Nitschke is watching his clients die by suicide (Link).
  

 

Denmark parliament pressured to OK euthanasia

This article was published by Bioedge on May 30, 2023.

By Michael Cook

A proposal to legalise euthanasia in Denmark has broken the threshold of 50,000 signatures to put it before the Danish Parliament for the first time.

Lars Lior Ramsgaard, a nurse from Aarhus, organised the petition. He says that he was inspired by the suffering of his patients and also of his own mother, who wanted to end her life, but was unable to.

In 2013, Ramsgaard said, a poll funded by Palliativt Videncenter, or Palliative Knowledge Centre and Trygfonden, a fund connected to the Tryg insurance company, found that 71 percent of the Danish population backed active euthanasia, while 61 percent of MPs were opposed.

The idea seems to be growing in popularity. In 2018, a similar proposal scored only 8,386 signatures and in 2019, another 1,409. However, the Danish Medical Association is calling on MPs to reject the proposal.

“There are many reasons for this: we do not think that suffering should be managed by killing people; we are afraid of the slippery slope we see in countries where euthanasia has been brought in; and we think one should invest in proper end-of-life palliative care,” said Klaus Klausen, chair of the association’s ethics committee.

The chairman of Denmark’s ethics council, Leif Vestergaard Pedersen, worries that legalisation would send a toxic message to young disabled people. “It is of great importance for young disabled people’s opportunity to live a really good life that they are recognized and respected by society,” he says. “We are going to change that if we say that disabled people can choose to die if they want, because we believe that their lives are not worth living.”

Canada euthanasia: People are dying because they feel that they have no choice.

This article was published by Bioedge on May 2, 2023.

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook

As Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying regime expands, it is meeting more resistance. One of the most powerful criticisms, one which has surfaced often in the media, is that some people with chronic illnesses, whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, are choosing to die because social services are inadequate. They do not want to, but they feel that they have no choice. Critics say that these cases show that people are being railroaded into choosing euthanasia and are unable to make a truly autonomous choice.

All very sad and tragic and a disgraceful commentary on Canada’s social services and so on – but not a good argument against MAiD, write two bioethicists in the Journal of Medical Ethics. These patients may be disabled and they may be oppressed, but they know what they are doing and their autonomous choices must be respected:

There is every evidence that many people subjected to oppressive socioeconomic circumstances demonstrate full autonomy in the relevant ways: they understand their options, appreciate the consequences of their actions, and persist in a course of action they view as better than the alternative of continuing to live in their current circumstances. Further, treating them as though they lack autonomy replicates the kinds of harmful biases that relational theorists aim to avoid.

Denying access to MAiD to these people falls into the fallacy of “ineffective individualism about systemic problems”. In other words, we may save their lives, but they will still be living in the same miserable and unjust conditions.

“The injustice of those social conditions should lead to social reform rather than a restriction of the options of the suffering individuals involved,” write the authors in a blog post.

Switzerland assisted suicide deaths and Colombia euthanasia deaths increase in 2022.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Michael Cook

I was cleaning up my emails and I noticed two articles by Michael Cook, the editor of Bioedge, that were published by Bioedge on February 14 that I have not shared.

The first article reported that the number of assisted suicide deaths by the Swiss assisted suicide group Exit, increased by 15% in 2022 to 1,125 deaths. Exit is one of the main assisted suicide groups in Switzerland.

The 2022 data indicates that there were 660 women and 465 men who died by assisted suicide. 37% of the people had cancer while 76% of the assisted suicides were done in the person's home and 18.6% of the deaths occured in a nursing or retirement home.

The second article concerned the increase in euthanasia deaths in Colombia. Cook explains that there was a big increase in the number of euthanasia deaths in 2022. Even though he didn't have the complete 2022. Cook reported:

According to the right-to-die group DescLab, in 2015 there were 4 euthanasia deaths; in 2021 there were 95. In the 10 months to October 31, 2022, there were 99.

The increase has been steady: 7 in 2016; 17 in 2017; 24 in 2018; 43 in 2019; 34 in 2020, and 95 in 2021.

According to a DescLab report, between 2015 and October 31, 2022, 322 euthanasia processes have been carried out in Colombia. The last recorded year, 2022, became the period with the most medically assisted deaths. In total, 99 deaths were recorded, while in 2015, when it was regulated, there were four.

Michael Cook reported in April 2021 that the recent Colombian euthanasia bill was defeated, Colombia permits euthanasia based on a 1997 Constitutional Court decision. Cook stated:

Although Colombia is often described as a country where euthanasia is legal, the actual situation is complicated. In 1997 the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that that "the State cannot oppose the decision of an individual who does not wish to continue living and who requests help to die when suffering from a terminal illness that causes unbearable pain, incompatible with his idea of dignity". It directed the legislature to pass a law regulating the right to die.

However, more than 20 years have passed and one bill after another has failed.

Euthanasia is a form of homicide that occurs when a medical professional kills a patient after the patient requested death. Assisted suicide occurs when a medical professional writes a prescription or provides a lethal dose to a patient that they person will self-administer. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are prohibited in most countries in the world.

Has Canada finally realized that its euthanasia law is a human rights disaster?

This article was published by Mercatornet on January 23, 2023.

By Michael Cook

Finally, after 40,000 or so deaths, Canadians are having second thoughts about legalised euthanasia.

Euthanasia deaths in Canada have shot upwards like a skyrocket. In 2015 there were none; in 2021, the last full year for which there are statistics, there were 10,064. On current trends, more than 10,000 died in 2022, bringing the total to more than 40,000.

But Justin Trudeau’s government believed that it was being too restrictive. It announced that it would permit patients with mental illness to request “medical assistance in dying”. This was due to begin on March 17.

Canada’s media, politicians and voters have been firmly behind MAiD. But as this deadline approached, a number of cases emerged of people who applied for MAiD simply because they didn’t have housing, or because they couldn’t access mental health care, or because they were lonely. At least four military veterans were pressured by a caseworker to accept MaiD, including a paralympian.

People began to realise that something was wrong — very wrong. A Toronto psychiatrist who had helped hundreds of people to die, Madeleine Li, told the BBC that Canada had gone too far. “Making death too ready a solution disadvantages the most vulnerable people, and actually lets society off the hook,” Dr Li said. “I don’t think death should be society’s solution for its own failures.”

In this astonishing documentary from Canada’s premier investigative journalism program, The Fifth Estate, journalist Gillian Findlay interviews several critics of the MAiD. Despite reassurances from the Minister for Justice, David Lametti, it shows that Canada is about to fall off a cliff.  

It’s well worth watching.

Canadian retailer exploits a young artist’s euthanasia to market its fashions

This article was published by Mercatornet on October 31, 2022

By Michael Cook

Editor of Mercatornet

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

Sometime after Canada’s Thanksgiving Day on October 10, a 37-year-old woman named Jennyfer was euthanised. A few days later, on October 24, one of Canada’s best-known fashion retailers, Quebec-based La Maison Simons, launched an advertising campaign based on her wish to die.

As part of its “All is Beauty” marketing strategy, the company released a stunning three-minute video on YouTube called “The Most Beautiful Exit” about Jennyfer as she prepares for “medical assistance in dying”, as it is called in Canada.

The film opens with an empty hospital room. “Dying in a hospital is not what’s natural, that’s not what’s soft. In these kinds of moments you need softness,” she says. And suddenly the hospital room is washed out to sea from a sandy beach.

“I spent my life filling my heart with beauty, with nature, with connection,” Jennyfer says. “I choose to fill my final moments with the same.”

It shows her on a chair at a beach at the centre of a circle of mute white-clad figures, mostly women. Giant spiral glyphs etched in the sand are erased by the waves.

In a forest, she eats cheesecake with laughing friends, lit by the flames of a bonfire. Giant luminescent puppets — jellyfish and a whale —float in the air. In the darkness around the celebration, silhouetted against the lurid flames are young dancers carrying lanterns on poles.

“Even now as I seek help to end my life, with all the pain in these final moments, there is still so much beauty,” she says. “You just have to be brave enough to see it.”

The video ends with the words “For Jennyfer: June 1985 to October 2022,” and then “All is beauty” with a small reference to La Maison Simons beneath.

The man behind the video is Peter Simons, who has just stepped down as CEO to become chief merchant of La Maison Simons, the oldest family-owned company in Canada. He explains his marketing strategy in a supplementary video. “We are a company that values community, connection, and compassion,” he explains. “The events of the past few years have shown us just how important and necessary these values are in our world today.”

“[We] have made the courageous choice to use the privilege of our voice and platform to create something meaningful, something that is less about commerce and more about connection,” he says.

As a Canadian marketing website notes, “The trend of marketers speaking out on important social issues has been taken to a new level,” with the “All is Beauty” campaign. It is bound to be controversial – especially when the 30-second abridged version hits television screens.

The video is very unsettling. La Maison Simons is treating euthanasia as performance art – a brilliant collage of photography, dance, puppetry, music, and sand art integrated into a beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia. Perhaps it’s appropriate that it was released shortly before Halloween, as some of the scenes are reminiscent of a witches’ coven.

Jennyfer does not identify her illness but at the very least she is lucid and able to interact with her friends. She doesn’t seem to be disabled by pain or terminally ill. You don’t have to be terminally ill in Canada to request euthanasia. But is it ethical for a company to use her death as the centrepiece for a major marketing campaign to sell its products? The glittering video can’t quite hide the ghoulish side of this stunt.

This video was not cheap; dozens of friends and actors were involved in filming it over two days just before Thanksgiving. The Canadian advertising company must have worked frantically to edit the film by October 27. Peter Simons’s personal interest and investment must have made it all but impossible for Jennyfer to change her mind about dying. Does he really think that it is ethical to ask her to die according to an advertiser’s timetable?

While Mr Simons and Jennyfer applaud euthanasia as a beautiful choice, stories are beginning to appear in the Canadian media about marginalised people who feel forced to access MAiD because they have only one choice — and it’s ugly. 

Sign our boycott petition to Simons (Link).

Thirty-one-year old Denise has Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and has applied for MAiD because she cannot find housing where she will not be exposed to cigarette smoke and air fresheners.

Forty-year-old Mitchell Tremblay suffers from severe depression, anxiety, alcoholism, personality disorders and continual thoughts of suicide. He is unemployed and poor. He can’t wait to become eligible for MAiD. “You know what your life is worth to you. And mine is worthless,” he told CTV News.

Fifty-four-year-old Amir Farsoud is applying for MAiD because he is homeless. “I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be homeless more than I don’t want to die,” he told CityNews. “I know, in my present health condition, I wouldn’t survive it anyway. It wouldn’t be at all dignified waiting, so if that becomes my two options, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.”

Euthanasia as performance art is the prerogative of the well-to-do, the well-connected and the privileged. Euthanasia as social injustice will be the lot of the down-and-outs, the abandoned, and the marginalised. If La Maison Simons really valued “community, connection, and compassion”, it would be subsidising housing and medical care for people like this. Instead it is exploiting the death of a young artist to burnish its brand as a champion of progressive values.

Article: Canadian fashion company advertises with euthanasia (Link).

British nurse charged with serial killing of newborns

This article was published by Bioedge on October 12, 2022

Lucy Letby

By Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet.

A 32-year-old nurse is on trial for murdering five new-born babies and attempting to murder 10 others at a hospital in the west of England. 

Lucy Letby, who is now 32, allegedly gave babies extra insulin doses or injected them with air in 2015 and 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital. An investigation by hospital staff and police found that the common factor in all the incidents was Ms Letby.

“Prior to January 2015, the statistics for the mortality of babies in the neo-natal unit at the Countess of Chester were comparable to other like units,” the prosecutor told the jury at the beginning of her trial at Manchester Crown Court. “However, over the next 18 months or so, there was a significant rise in the number of babies who were dying and in the number of serious catastrophic collapses.”

Ms. Letby has pleaded not guilty; her trial is expected to last for up to six months.

 

Victoria Australia euthanasia deaths increase by 31%

This article was published by Mercatornet on September 30, 2022

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet

When it passed in the Victorian parliament in 2017, the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act must have been one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in Australian history. Lobbying on both sides was intense; the debate in the lower house lasted an extraordinary 24 hours over three days; the upper house passed it after a marathon 28-hour sitting.

The new law came into effect in June 2019. After some interim reports, the first annual report, covering the year to June 30, has just been published. Wall-to-wall coverage of the results, right?

Wrong. It was barely mentioned in the media, and not at all in The Age, one of the state’s leading voices in favour of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia.

A similar uptick in road deaths in Victoria last year prompted headlines and breast-beating. “Shock number of people killed on Victorian roads,” was the headline in the Herald-Sun. But when a shock number of people were killed in Victorian beds, the government and the media ignored them.

Premier Daniel Andrews and his ministers have boasted constantly about the 68 safeguards in their legislation. But the best safeguard of all is the sunlight of media scrutiny. And there has been precious little of that.

Should we be alarmed? Yes. The number of Victorians using voluntary assisted dying increased by 31% in a single year, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. In the year to June 2022, 269 people died, compared to 204 in the previous year. A total of 594 people has died through assisted suicide or euthanasia since the commencement of the state’s legislation in 2019.

However, the chairman of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board, Julian Gardner, was delighted with the results. “The number of people seeking to access voluntary assisted dying continues to increase,” he wrote in an introduction to the Board’s annual report. “This is a further indicator of the success of the system.”

A steady increase in the number of deaths is a strange metric of success. Does this mean that, hypothetically, 100,000 deaths would constitute success beyond his wildest dreams?

The Premier also described the Act as “the safest scheme in the world, with the most rigorous checks and balances” before it was passed. So it is unsettling to read that Mr Gardner parroted these reassurances before admitting that four deaths were technically non-compliant with the legislation, although he was confident that they were “clinically appropriate”. Three contact people did not return substances left over from the procedure to authorities quickly enough and one person had signed for the medication as both the applicant and witness.

Is this the “rigorous checks and balances” trumpeted by the Premier Andrews? In his state, not so long ago, police were arresting and handcuffing people for not wearing Covid masks. But errors in the procedures for killing people don’t even merit a rebuke.

And the figures in the report are still incomplete, as there is no information on six people who died after obtaining their permit – and it is not clear whether they died a natural death or whether it was self-administered or practitioner-administered.

Mr Gardner’s optimism about the latest figures contrasted with an observation by a trenchant critic of the Victorian legislation, the Australian Care Alliance: “Deaths by euthanasia and assistance to suicide in the twelve months July 2021 to June 2022 represent 0.58 percent of all deaths in Victoria for that period. It took Oregon 22 years to reach that rate!”

The Premier has also boasted that the Victorian legislation was drafted with the help of “world experts”. What qualifies a person to be a “world expert” in euthanasia is a mystery, but two local experts at the University of Melbourne argued in 2020 that Victoria’s vaunted safeguards create barriers to equal access.

“While safety is undoubtedly ethically important, our analysis indicates that a legislative focus on maximizing safety comes at the expense of equal access,” they declared. In other words, you can have rigorous safeguards or you can have equal access, but you can’t have both.

And right on cue, Mr Gardner complains in the annual report that safeguards are preventing equal access. At the moment, under a Federal law forbidding giving advice about suicide, Victorian doctors are banned from tele-consulting for assisted dying. “The law as it exists creates barriers to access to care and, in some cases, imposes unreasonable travel demands on people suffering from life-ending medical conditions,” Mr Gardner wrote. “A change to the law will enhance access for all Victorians, regardless of their location or mobility.”

The issue of location will be a lever for reducing the number of safeguards. It would take a rare MP to oppose more equal access in today’s political climate.

The report says that 37 percent of applicants for assisted dying lived in regional Victoria, even though only 22 percent of Victorians live there. It seems unfair that they cannot access assisted dying as easily as city folks. And in fact, just as the local experts predicted, a regional MP, Stuart Grimley, grumbled last year that “there are too many safeguards in place, too many steps that a person must take to access the voluntary assisted dying scheme, too many hurdles for them to overcome.”

Coinciding with the release of the report on assisted dying was a report on the state of palliative care in Victoria by KPMG, an independent consultant. According to Palliative Care Victoria, “Demand for palliative care services has increased by 11.9% over the last 5 years, due to the growing and ageing of Victoria’s population. Meanwhile, funding increased by only 10.2% in the same period. The shortfall in funding for service delivery is expected to reach A$91.2 million by 2025.”

What are the odds that safeguards will be relaxed even further to offer regional Victorians assisted dying because no palliative care is available for people in great distress?

What does the future hold for the disabled when euthanasia is legal?

This article was published by Bioedge on September 6, 2022.

By Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet

As the cartoon above suggests, disability activists fear that euthanasia could become a cheaper option for medical care. In a position paper published by the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, in the UK, a Canadian expert in disability studies contends that “While the expansion of [euthanasia and assisted suicide] has been motivated by a desire to end suffering and respect autonomy, in doing so we have created significant risk to disabled persons in a world which largely sees their lives as less valuable, as ones of inevitable suffering and as not worth living.”

Professor Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship, believes that a “quiet eugenics” becomes more acceptable when euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) have been legalised. In many countries, children with Down syndrome are already being aborted after pre-natal testing. In Belgium and the Netherlands, neo-natal euthanasia is technically illegal but permitted in some circumstance. Professor Stainton says that “Significant numbers of these cases involve neonates with non-life threatening, medically treatable conditions and disabilities.”

He cites studies of the ableist attitudes in the medical profession. One recent survey found that 82% of practicing physicians in the US believed that “people with significant disability have worse quality of life than non-disabled people”. This makes “unbiased practice of EAS with regards to disabled individuals … highly questionable,” he writes.

Attitudes towards the disabled ignore what scholars called “the disability paradox” – that “many with persistent and serious disabilities report that they experience anywhere between a good to an excellent quality of life”. But people with an ableist bias are unable to appreciate that.

To return to the message of the cartoon, Professon Stainton writes that “A key concern of the disability community is that people will seek access to EAS because they are unable to secure the degree or types of disability supports and accommodations they need to live a full and meaningful life.”

What does the future hold for the disabled in countries with EAS? Professor Stainton fears that broad public support for “mercy killings” will create a climate in which parents will be able to have disabled children euthanised. “It is also not inconceivable that families with decision-making control or influence will choose EAS for their children when faced with insurmountable barriers to securing appropriate supports.”

The Cartoon was created by Amy Hasbrouck, a Board Member of Not Dead Yet, and Director of Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet, a project of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities and past President of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Spain: Where the right to die trumps the right to justice

This article was published by Mercatornet on July 25, 2022.

Should a murderer escape his day in court by asking for euthanasia?

Michael Cook

By Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet

Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, successfully bid for the Olympics in 1992. Thirty years later Catalonia is making a bid to be the world capital of euthanasia fundamentalism.

A recent case in a court in the city of Tarragona, about 100 kilometres south of Barcelona, is a prime exhibit for the loopiness of a pro-euthanasia mentality.

In Catalonia, euthanasia is far from uncommon. Since euthanasia was legalized in Spain in June last year, 60 of the country’s 172 cases have taken place in this region — more than a third, although Catalonia has only 16 percent of the total population.

The man at the centre of this controversy is Marin Eugen Sabau. He wants to die. “I am paraplegic. I have 45 stitches in my hand. I cannot move my left arm well. I have screws in my body and cannot feel from the chest down,” he says. If anyone had a right to end their pain and die with dignity, it was Marin Eugen Sabau. Two doctors and two representatives of the regional government, a doctor and a lawyer, agreed. Mr Sabau’s application was processed with unusual haste. A date was set – July 28.

However, a judge recently issued a temporary stay and Sabau’s death has been delayed.

Why? Mr Sabau’s case is exceptional, even unprecedented — because he is awaiting trial for attempted murder and a host of other charges. If he were euthanised, he would never be tried for those crimes.

On December 14 last year, Mr Sabau, a 45-year-old Romanian security guard, donned a goofy woman’s wig, walked into his workplace in Tarragona, and shot three of his co-workers. Then he fled the scene and barricaded himself in an abandoned farmhouse. In a gun battle with police, two of them were wounded. Eventually snipers put Mr Sabau out of action, shooting him in his back, his arm and his leg. He ended up a paraplegic and one of his legs was amputated.

Feeling none too chipper after the sudden changes in his life, Mr Sabau asked for euthanasia. The police were horrified. Where was justice for the victims? They objected in a court in Tarragona. The judge, Sonia Zapater, backed Mr Sabau.

Ms Zapater acknowledged that there was a “collision of fundamental rights”. But she ruled that Mr Sabau’s right to an autonomous decision must prevail over the right of victims to justice. Under the law only minors and mentally impaired patients who cannot give informed consent are ineligible for euthanasia. She dismissed the victims’ appeal.

This was euthanasia fundamentalism at its most fanatical. Only one thing mattered: the autonomous will. The individual owes nothing to other human beings or to society. The only thing that counts is his pain; woolly notions like justice or responsibility are meaningless.

Fortunately for the victims, Ms Zapater took her holiday leave, and another judge agreed to grant a stay. What happens next will be a test of Spain’s commitment to the rule of law – and to common sense.

Euthanasia fundamentalism at its most extreme is at work in Catalonia. Mr Sabau’s presumed right to a “death with dignity” has so far trumped all claims that society has upon him. He tried to kill several of his fellow citizens, breaching the most fundamental norm of the law in a civilised society – Thou shalt not kill. Doesn’t society have a right to declare that his actions were destructive, dangerous, and wrong? Don’t his victims have a right to have their pain recognised?

No, not in Catalonia.

A local newspaper interviewed María Jiménez, a bioethicist at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in Tarragona, about the case. Yup, the judge was right, she said. The victims of the crime have no say in whether or not Mr Sabau “escapes justice”. Her reasoning is worth recording:

“For me there is a fundamental issue, which is the management of emotions. On the one hand, there is the right of this person, but on the other, the right to compensate the moral damage that other people have, emotionally, this weighs heavily, and society expects a protective response towards the victims. It is a difficult problem to solve, since whatever decision is taken, it will probably not satisfy both parties because they are two completely extreme points.”

In her autonomy-driven vision of law, justice – giving each party his due – has disappeared. All that remains are competing emotions. But this is false. Law is not about rage and vengeance but about restoring the moral balance which a criminal has upset. That’s why there was such an uproar when paedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided his trial by committing suicide. As a lawyer for the victims said: “[They] deserved to see Epstein held accountable, and he owed it to everyone he hurt to accept responsibility for all of the pain he caused.” There speaks 2500 years of Western culture. The normalisation of euthanasia threatens to undermine this.

Mr Sabau intended to kill people and almost succeeded. He grievously wounded several of them. Ideally, he should acknowledge his crime and be reconciled with his victims and society. If he escapes his appointment with justice, euthanasia will not bring him death with dignity. Only a man who takes responsibility for his actions truly has dignity.

Swiss Medical Association backs restrictions on assisted suicide

This article was published by Bioedge on June 21, 2022.

By Michael Cook is the editor of Bioedge.

The Swiss Medical Association has clarified its attitude toward assisted suicide – and it is very restrictive in the face of growing pressures for liberalisation. Assisted suicide has been legal for decades in Switzerland, but since the 1990s, Switzerland has become a haven for foreigners seeking to die.

The guidelines issued last month declare that “assisted suicide for healthy persons is not medically and ethically justifiable”. As such, healthy persons who want to end their lives must prove that their suffering is “unbearable”, and that “other options have been unsuccessful or are rejected by the patient as unreasonable”.

Patients should also have at least two meetings with a doctor– at least two weeks apart –before the final decision to ensure that their desire is “well-considered and enduring”.

The guidelines underscore that the doctor is free to refuse to cooperate:

The true role of physicians in the management of dying and death, however, involves relieving symptoms and supporting the patient. Their responsibilities do not include offering assisted suicide, nor are they obliged to perform it. Assisted suicide is not a medical action to which patients could claim to be entitled, even if it is a legally permissible activity.

The guidelines bring the medical association into line with the ethical guidelines issued in 2018 by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. While not legally binding, they will form part of an ethical code for Swiss doctors.

The guidelines were criticised by the major Swiss assisted suicide organisations. In a joint statement, they complained that the guidelines would make it more difficult to provide help to those who want to end their lives. They say that a requirement that a doctor decide on the “severity” of a patient’s condition infringes an individual’s right to define his suffering.

Will the stand of the Swiss Medical Association change how assisted suicide works in Switzerland? Perhaps not.

Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian activist who is involved in a Swiss assisted suicide clinic, sneered on Twitter: “Swiss Med Assn doesn’t like it when doctors don’t control the process…but luckily, the Med Assn doesn’t make the law…and until they do, healthy people can indeed get help to die in Switzerland.”

More articles on this topic:

• Swiss Medical Association approves tighter assisted suicide guidelines (Link).
• Swiss assisted suicide clinic facing lawsuit and questions concerning foreign suicides (Link). 
• Swiss assisted suicide clinic provides death for $11,000 (Link).
  

Australian assisted dying law forces religiously affiliated medical institutions to provide euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

New South Wales is the final Australian state to legalize euthanasia with a catch, the Voluntary Assisted Dying bill forces religiously affiliated medical institutions to provide euthanasia.

As stated by Michael Cook, the editor of Bioedge:

The new law will allow patients to choose between assisted suicide and euthanasia. Its provisions are more or less the same as the other states, but it does not allow institutions to refuse to allow their residents to have VAD, to the consternation of Catholic healthcare officials.

“This law will force organisations that do not agree with assisted dying to allow doctors onto their premises to prescribe and even administer restricted drugs with the intention of terminating a resident’s life – without even informing the facility,” said Brigid Meney, of Catholic Health Australia. “These laws ignore the rights of staff and residents who may choose to work and live in a particular residential facility because of their opposition to assisted dying.”

It is one thing to give doctors the right in law to kill their patients it is another issue when you force people who oppose the killing to participate.

Greg Donnelly, a Labor Member of the Legislative Council, who had proposed amendments, including conscience rights, to the legislation stated:

it was “utterly repugnant and draconian” to force facilities with moral objections to assisted suicide or euthanasia to allow the practices. Such provisions are “essentially an authoritarian imposition on what are, in our civil society, associations of people coming together for a purpose.”

Canada's euthanasia lobby has also launched a campaign to force religiously affiliated health care institutions to provide euthanasia.

The legislation will come into effect in 18 months.

Doctors’ fear of saying No to euthanasia could make it the default way to die

The following article was published by Mercatornet on February 7, 2022.

By Michael Cook

The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals. But some of its most influential publications are reports by its “Commissions” for policy makers. These are white papers by experts which identify the most pressing issues in science, medicine, and global health.

With the Covid pandemic and a global push for the legalisation of “assisted dying”, its latest report, the “Lancet Commission on the Value of Death”, could not be more timely.

Its scope is vast – from a survey of philosophical and theological views of death to the sociology of “death systems” to economic and technological pressures to medicalise death.

But its overarching theme is that health and social systems around the world are failing to give appropriate, compassionate care to people who are dying and their families. Today’s overemphasis on aggressive treatments to prolong life, vast global inequities in palliative care access, and high end-of-life medical costs have led millions of people to suffer unnecessarily at the end of life.

The Commission calls for public attitudes to death and dying to be “rebalanced”, away from a narrow, medicalised approach towards a compassionate community model, where communities and families work with health and social care services to care for people dying.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has seen many people die the ultimate medicalised death, often alone but for masked staff in hospitals and intensive care units, unable to communicate with their families, except digitally”, says Dr Libby Sallnow, palliative medicine consultant and honorary senior clinical lecturer at St Christopher’s Hospice and UCL (UK) and co-Chair of the Commission.

“How people die has changed dramatically over the past 60 years, from a family event with occasional medical support, to a medical event with limited family support. A fundamental rethink is needed in how we care for the dying, our expectations around death, and the changes required in society to rebalance our relationship with death.”

On the whole, the report is a thoughtful, wise and compassionate document. Again and again, it returns to a central theme, that “Death and dying must be recognised as not only normal, but valuable.”

What about ‘assisted dying’?

However, to its great discredit, its authors have refused to exclude “assisted dying” — its preferred term for assisted suicide and euthanasia — from end-of-life care. Most of the commission members were either neutral on the topic or supported it. The sections dealing with “assisted dying” and advance directives were written not by a doctor but by a sociologist, Professor Celia Kitzinger, of the University of Cardiff. Her specialties are feminism, homosexuality, and conversation analysis. Back in 2006 she made a splash in the British media when she contracted a same-sex marriage in Canada and attempted unsuccessfully to have it recognised in the United Kingdom. She is an unusual choice for writing what is possibly the most controversial section.

In fact, most of the report undermines arguments for assisted suicide and euthanasia. It emphasises that pain is seldom the reason for requests for “assisted dying”: “a sense of burden and a loss of meaning drive the pursuit of an assisted death, rather than unbearable physical symptoms. A ‘sense of aching loneliness,’ the ‘pain of not mattering,’ and a sense that their ‘life story has ended’ influenced the wish for death to come sooner.”

But it points out, “new relationships can counteract loneliness and suicidal thinking”. It envisages a “realistic utopia” for death in the 21st century in which death is more relational, in which each dying person is surrounded by a “network of care”, in which though “not always welcome, death has inescapable purpose and value”.

This is the philosophy of palliative care, but the report talks more about “assisted dying”, advance care planning, and advance directives than about the future of palliative care. 

Looking into a crystal ball

It is hard to escape the impression that this report, so impressive in many ways, is preparing its readers for a future in which assisted suicide and euthanasia are the default choice for death, rather than palliative care.

A concluding section of the report is devoted to futurecasting. Five scenarios are described. The fifth is that “Assisted dying becomes a component of universal health care” in nearly all high-income countries and in many medium and low-income countries. It will be “available not only to those judged to be near the end of life but also to all people with unbearable suffering, those developing dementia, and those who are ‘tired of life’,” the report says. “It is tightly regulated but provided by many health-care professionals, including those working in palliative care, and in some countries up to a quarter of people die in this way” [emphasis added].

Those concluding words ought to terrify us. Let that sink in: one in every four deaths will be through euthanasia. What does that say about relationships and about doctors? It would be a complete transformation of medicine.

In such a future, palliative care is bound to disappear. The report emphasises how low funding for palliative care is on most governments’ priorities. If one in four deaths are “assisted”, will there be any funding at all?

Three years ago, the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, asked in an editorial: “How did it happen that palliative care lost the dignity debate?” His answer was, “Those in favour of assisted dying have portrayed palliative care as somehow antithetical to patient autonomy. According to this view, palliative care is conservative and paternalistic.”

This still holds. But there is another reason – that leading physicians and medical journals like The Lancet are too timid to say No to euthanasia and assisted suicide. They are willing to accept a future where the default way of dying will be euthanasia.

 Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet.

7 Spaniards who were euthanised last year donated their organs

This article was published by Bioedge on January 28, 2022.

By Michael Cook, Editor of Bioedge.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

Spain legalised euthanasia on June 25 last year and already transplant surgeons are using organs from euthanised patients. According to a report in the Spanish magazine Redaccíon Médica, 7 patients donated their organs – even though the government has still not release national guidelines for such procedures.

Why the rush?

The head of Spain’s National Transplant Organization (ONT), Beatriz Domínguez-Gil, said that the ONT “intuited” [sic] that some euthanasia patients would like to donate their organs. It quickly drafted some guidelines for transplant coordinators so that euthanasia donation could be “normalised” throughout the country.

Every case has to be treated very delicately, says Sra Domínguez-Gil. If a euthanasia patient wants to donate, he has to do it in a hospital setting, and not at home.

She emphasized that the decision to donate and to provide aid in dying must be “independent”. “Totally independent professionals participate. The provision of aid in dying is channeled and then the donation is considered,” she says.

No official figures have been released, but the ABC, a national newspaper estimated that about 50 people had been euthanised in 2021. To have persuaded 7 out of those 50 to donate their organs – 14% — is an amazing achievement.

Article: At least 50 Spanish euthanasia deaths in the first six months (Link).

Switzerland has not approved suicide pod.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The International media is gaga over Philip Nitschke's Sarco or suicide pod. I try not to write a lot about Nitshcke because he runs a suicide business where he provides online suicide books and devices and he has a website and chatroom explaining to people the best suicide methods.

When the story was released, I called Sarco a deadly lucrative stunt for Nitschke and I suggested that the article by Clare O'Dea for Swissinfo confirmed my thoughts. O'Dea wrote:

The first Sarco is being displayed at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture in Kassel, Germany from September 2021 to August 2022. The second turned out not to be aesthetically pleasing. For that and various other reasons it’s not the best one to use.

In suggest that the purpose of Sarco is to promote Nitschke's suicide business. This is precisely why Sarco is designed in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Now Snopes published an article by Nur Ibrahim stating that Switzerland has not approved Nitschke's suicide pod. I don't always agree with Snopes, but Snopes is correct when it states:

Dr. Philip Nitschke, the man behind the Sarco capsule, claims that the pods have passed a “legal review” and will be available for use in Switzerland in 2022. But details of the “legal review” have not been revealed. Experts consulted by Sarco have argued use of the pod falls outside of Swiss law. A number of assisted suicide organizations in Switzerland have also expressed skepticism over using the machine, and the legality surrounding it.

I think that Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet, was right when he referred to Sarco as both a gas chamber and a coffin.

Snopes is right when it states that Sarco falls outside of Swiss law.

Nitschke has once again gained international attention and free advertising from the media for his suicide business. As Paul Russell said a few years ago in his article about Nitschke - "It's a business after all."