70% of the Canadians reported cancer as the reason for MAID. It sounds like thousands of Californians are experiencing unnecessary and extended end of life suffering.
Canada has over double the number of deaths due to lung cancer and nearly double the deaths due to colorectal cancer compared to California.
Essentially cancer looks different in California than Canada. This makes drawing conclusions that there are thousands suffering unnecessarily extended end of life experiences difficult.
https://cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org/#!/state/Californi...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9067380/#!po=28...
Why is that your take? Why isn't it "Thousands of Canadians are being killed too soon in an effort to save the government money"? or some other take? We already have stories of Canada asking Veterans to join "MAID" instead of getting a wheelchair...
Because nobody's made that case.
Making a case requires evidence. Not handwaving and appeals to movie plots.
> We already have stories of Canada asking Veterans to join "MAID" instead of getting a wheelchair...
As long as we're trading conspiracy theories, the person who reported that was paid off by the right wing to make MAID seem horrible, and therefore something that should be ended, and my conspiracy theory has a lot more going for it than yours does.
>The majority of persons receiving MAID during 2020 were reported as having cancer as their main underlying medical condition (69.1%). This is followed by cardiovascular conditions (13.8%), chronic respiratory conditions (11.3%) and neurological conditions (10.2%)
Some additional breakdowns:
>Cardiovascular conditions were the second most frequently cited main condition for persons receiving MAID. Congestive heart failure was the most frequently cited heart condition in this category (42.2%). Under respiratory conditions, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was the most frequently listed condition.
>Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, was the leading neurological condition reported for persons receiving MAID (35.2%), followed by Parkinson's disease (18.1%) multiple sclerosis (MS) (9.7%), and progressive supranuclear palsy (4.4%).
Edit: Just realized that was the 2020 report (with around 7500 using MAID). The 2021 report is here: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assi.... Cancer is down a bit in this one (69% to 65%).
Or perhaps palliative care is better in California.
I’m not Californian, and I seriously doubt what I just wrote. But there most certainly are more factors that need to be considered here.
Did I miss the actual concrete evidence this is being purposefully being used to reduce certain populations?
> Mary knows that she could control her pain if she could take vitamin pills, eat a special diet, and go to physiotherapy. She can’t afford it. “Mary identifies poverty as the driver of her MAID request,” Gibb-Carsley writes on a slide accompanying her talk, emphasizing the. “She does not want to die, but she’s suffering terribly and she’s been maxing out her credit cards. She has no other options.”
It seems excessively cruel to me to try and force people to live in misery big enough to make the want to kill themselves instead of alleviating the misery. Like, the article seems to frame the argument that MAID can be used to lobby for better welfare as a ridiculous idea, but that's really it: if the only thing keeping people in your society from killing themselves that it's hard and scary, what the fuck is your society doing to these people.
1. Are people in poverty or with mental illness more likely to choose MAID on their own.
or
2. Are there people actively trying to encourage vulnerable populations to choose MAID?
The enter point of the MAiD system is to result in deaths. I think the intent matters a lot. I don't think it's a cause for alarm if we find some subpopulations that use a medical service more than others. I do think it's alarming if people are scheming to kill poor people.
People with disabilities and/or grievous suffering from illness(es) tend to be depressed, especially when finances and supports are lacking.
If we restrict MAID to the wealthy without mental conditions, we end up prolonging the suffering of many people.
Of course, I'm also in favor of just not organizing benefits so that disabled people wind-up facing homelessness and so being willing to choose death.
Why are people forced to live if they don't want to?
On the other hand, there are articles like this[1], wherein the main factor for the requested euthanasia is income.
"But until recently, he was able to live comfortably, sharing his modest home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with his service dog.
Changes to his state benefits when he turned 65 in May meant his income was cut and he's now left with around $120 per month after paying for medical bills and essentials."
The bogeyman against a state monopoly on medical care has long been that the state will seek cost effectiveness over quality of care, and this adds the additional paranoia of worrying over whether other social safety net programs may lean into the notion that perhaps it isn't as beneficial to fund those who are less productive members of society due to age or inability when it is easier to put them down.
I don't have a particular dog in the fight either way, but where I want medical assisted euthanasia to exist as an option against suffering, I have some concern that it could become encouraged for what I consider less appropriate ailments, like poverty.
[1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11516989/Canadian-m...
And I've seen zero sign that this is even on the radar of government, though perhaps that's what MAID is for. At least it's an option to homelessness.
If you squint at MAID one way, you can see all the good it does for people who really need it. If you squint another way, you can see the medical system just killing off the people it failed.
We ensure that there are thousands more of them, promote them, and ensure that they are rewarded for denying health care to as many people as possible (after collecting money from the victims).
We'd need to do a bit of branding on the whole thing, of course. We would first want to ensure that they are not medical professionals making these decisions. "Adjusters" has a nice ring to it.
We could build an entire industry out of this. And I think if we did all of that, many people's problems with euthanasia would be ameliorated.
Same here. This fucking abomination of a doctor should be screaming bloody hell and knocking on government doors to have them address the problem.
Here we are: rich developed democratic country basically telling our poor to go fuck themselves and die.
Because we live in a society, not some libertarian utopia of sovereign citizens. Your life doesn’t belong only to yourself, but it belongs to all of us. Your parents, your kids, your friends, your acquaintances. We are all affected by what you do to yourself and, concomitantly, get a say in it.
your life belongs to you. the options to end it on your own terms is IMHO an act of ultimate freedom. the same way where you should be free to do whatever you want as long as your actions don't impair the freedom of someone else.
As with abortion, why must I cheerfully pay taxes for policy affecting individuals that's morally objectionable?
Like, I don't think people need a lot of help convincing themselves of not wanting to die unless they are already desperate, and making access to death harder is like forcing the homeless to take a one way bus to another town - you are just hiding the problem. As long as nobody is pushed to use the program, the same arguments that say "well, nobody is forcing you to take that shitty job/pay that exorbitant rent" apply.
It's just that in this case, the signal sent by multiple people choosing death over life because the system isn't working for then is very clearly "what the fuck are you doing to poor people", which is an uncomfortable question, so the impulse is to make access to death harder - then you can again ignore the fact that these people might commit suicide anyway, or suffer immensely, because that will show up just as mental illness or personal failure in the statistics
As for the gift of happy, healthy and fulfilling life - you may want to have a word with my wife suffering from MS. It is fortunate that we have neighboring countries that are not as hypocrite as France is and where you can end your life when you want to.
This is such a conflict of interest. How are you supposed to trust organizations and people who, when you ask for help, might be motivated to take advantage of your vulnerability?
I think many people view it as being selfish. Killing the pet to avoid the hassle of dealing with it's illness and avoid the expense of it's medical care.
I don't particularly agree, I think it can be compassionate but also understand where this view comes from.
The expense of medical care for pets is often the wrong way of looking at it. A dog doesn’t understand chemotherapy, it only knows it feels really sick. It doesn’t understand invasive surgery, it just knows pain, and wearing the cone of shame. Dogs don’t have the same inner life that we do, so a lot of medical interventions would cause a lot of suffering for what, a few months more life?
And if you don’t want the hassle of dealing with a pet’s illness, don’t get a pet. The relationship you build with a pet should make you understand you owe them your loyalty in the bad times, not just the good.
Killing a pet that is practically family and has been part of your life for 10+ years is not something people do to avoid responsibility.
It's already apparently 2.5% of deaths in Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assi...
We have credible reports of a person aged 23 who was approved for medically assisted death because they were diabetic and depressed. https://www.thefp.com/p/scheduled-to-die-the-rise-of-canadas
The top 1% of patients use approximately 30% of the total cost of health care. https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...
The Canadian health care system is extremely strained. We are already in an age of hallway medicine as there aren't enough staff to treat the people in rooms. https://www.cma.ca/news/canadas-health-care-crisis-what-we-n...
This would also suggest that once we get even better at cancer treatments, the rate of people dying to MAID will drop dramatically.
Later in the stats, ~80% of people have lost the ability to engage in activities of daily life (which IMO is a terrible place to be).
I don't think your reference supports your claim at all. In fact, it suggests that it's doing exactly what it is meant to do: ending unnecessary suffering for those who are dying of diseases we don't yet have a cure to.
You're of course welcome to be on either side of this issue, but please edit swipes like that out of your comments here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(Your comment would be fine without that bit.)
This is mind blowingly archaic as an attitude and very dangerous. Maybe you don’t know many people or are lucky to only be surrounded by mentally healthy individuals but many in the spectrum of depression and other ailments which are pretty common feel suicidal. They fight the urge not to consider this fate. If a doctor comes and tells them maybe you should consider killing your self, it’s alright, I’ll help you, guess what, they’re going to feel utterly helpless.
Agreed that MAD for cancer patients and patients with unimaginable incurable chronic pain is not bad, but there needs to be immense scrutiny into every case where this dangerous tool is used for people who have mental disorders.
MAID didn't create or change the conditions these people are in and it's not like the Conservatives pushing this narrative are known for anything but outrage and cuts to social safety nets..
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig...
[0] https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/dying-for-the-right-to-live/
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/woman-with-disabilities-nears-...
[2] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/woman-with-chemical-sensitivit...
[3] https://www.thestar.com/2022/assisted-death.html
[4] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig...
[5] https://nypost.com/2022/08/22/canadian-soldier-with-ptsd-out...
[6] https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wh...
