The Canadian government announced Monday that it is indefinitely postponing plans to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for patients with mental illness but no physical illness.
Canada’s long march Efforts on assisted suicide appear to have finally stalled over a proposal to allow doctors to provide assisted suicide for mentally ill people.Canadian doctors have gone from discussing euthanasia as a last resort to actively discussing it. Recommend That also applies to patients who want treatment rather than death. Critics fear that if MAID is extended to the mentally ill, Canada’s overburdened socialist health care system will collapse. I was very tempted Using euthanasia to clear long waiting lists for psychiatric treatment.
Assisted suicide is expanding faster in Canada than in any other country in the world or in history. The number of deaths caused by maids has quadrupled in the past five years and now accounts for 4 percent of all deaths in the country. If current trends hold, Canada could have more assisted suicides by the end of this year than countries such as the Netherlands, which legalized it decades ago.
of toronto star lost in thought Expanding MAID to cover mental illness could lead to a dizzying increase in the already huge number of assisted suicides, as “one in five Canadians is affected by a mental health problem” was announced on Saturday.
Dr. Cheryl Rowe, a Toronto psychiatrist who supports the expansion of MAID, eerily describes this as a “medical failure”: “So many doctors believe they have to keep their patients alive at all costs.” did.
Whatever benefits that philosophy may have for terminally ill people, extending it to psychiatry and encouraging doctors to recommend suicide to people who are not of sound mind almost certainly leads to death by maid. would cause an explosive nuclear explosion.
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Some experts see this rapid growth as a human rights victory, allowing Canadians to choose when they want to die with the full support of the state and their doctors. Some worry that failing health systems and social safety nets are contributing to the surge.
The expansion of coverage for mental illnesses was due to come into effect in 2022, but a nervous government delayed it until March 2024, and now it has been postponed again. Opinion polls show that only about one-third of Canadians support expanding MAID to people with mental illness, and most of those supporters believe that people should not seek mental health care before assisted suicide is on the table. I hope access will improve.
Conservative MP Michael Cooper Said On Sunday, Canada said it was not ready to include mental illness in MAID, saying it is not yet ready to include mental illness in MAID, and whether a mentally ill person is making a reasonable request for assisted suicide or whether a mentally ill person is making a reasonable request. He pointed to expert testimony from a psychiatrist that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to determine. The condition is not treatable.
“These liberals are putting ideology above evidence-based decision-making,” Cooper said.
Another opposition lawmaker, Alistair McGregor of the left-wing NDP, likened the rush to assisted suicide to “building a plane in the air.”
“All of this speaks to the Liberal Party’s mismanagement of this file from the beginning, which has led us to a kind of legal impasse right now,” he said.
Although Health Minister Mark Holland has said the expansion will be delayed until practical hurdles can be overcome rather than halting it for ethical reasons, experts say Canada is not ready for further expansion of MAID. He seems to have been persuaded by the family’s testimony.
“We certainly recognize that there is an equivalence between physical suffering and mental suffering. But we need to make sure that support is there and training is in place. ” Holland said.
Monday after being postponed indefinitely. announced“We’ll probably be in a position in the next few days to discuss how much time we think it will take,” Holland said.
“The curriculum exists, the guidelines are in place, but there hasn’t been enough time for people to be trained on it, and states and territories say their systems aren’t ready and they need more time. “We are doing so,” he said.
Netherlands Added The governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec have all said they are not ready to move forward with expanding MAID eligibility.
Opponents on the Congressional Committee on MAID Expansion say that because the federal government has met all the technical conditions for “readiness,” reluctant states should not be allowed to cancel the program nationwide. He claimed that there was no.
“It also stigmatizes individuals with mental illnesses and reinforces the myth that people with mental illnesses are incapable of making informed decisions about end-of-life choices,” the opponents said. Ta.
“Inclusion Canada’s legal and communications director, Kurt Goddard, said: claimed inside vancouver sun MAID for mental illness would be a “serious and dangerous change in our social values,” no matter how prepared politicians and undertakers claim they are. “It should never happen,” he said Monday.
Citing his own experience with family members affected by mental illness, Goddard said that while serious mental illness can often seem hopeless and untreatable to those suffering, suicide He argued that, whether desperate or not, it tends to be far more devastating to loved ones than desperate people think. believe.
Goddard said treating mental illness as a terminal illness that can be treated with euthanasia undermines his organization and others’ longstanding advocacy for “the full inclusion and human rights of people with intellectual disabilities.” I warned him that he would. It will also have a major impact on the already difficult task of suicide prevention.
“How can we promote suicide prevention while supporting policies that promote state-assisted suicide?” he asked.
