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I like the EU and all and no offence but does a trading block really need to be concerned about our practices? Thay afraid if we linked up well go around executing old people?
Regardless of the program implemented there will be someone gatekeeping it. How about we just leave MAID to the patient and their doctor to decide. It was a great thing for my brother when he was dying from ALS it would not have been kind to let him suffer for a few more months. If you are against MAID then don’t use it.
I’ve known two people who used MAID to end their lives. Both had terminal illnesses that were heading towards protracted, painful, debilitating ends. They used MAID ro end their lives on their terms and because they didn’t want to live through that or to put their families through it.
To me, their access to MAID absolutely provided more humane, dignified, caring treatment than they would have had in being forced to live through what they were facing.
Their cases were pretty clear cut imo, but I understand there are much less clear cut circumstances and situations where concerns over mental health and necessity of MAID vs alternatives requires much more challenging judgment. It’s not straightforward and clear cut in all circumstances. You never want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on either side of this issue, be it needlessly enforcing suffering or needlessly ending a life.
What that indicates to me is MAID is a good thing to have, but we just really need to invest in quality research and policy development, and that includes research and investment into ensuring the system of administration is well-designed and well-maintained in accordance with the research and humane ethics. As long as we keep doing that, we’re taking the right approach to do the best we can.
We put our animals to sleep to save them from suffering. Gramma tho? She gotta be a vegetable for a few years before she can get some relief.
I don’t think it’s fair to draw this comparison on either end as this concerns relationships that are extremely contextualized and subject to change (human to nonhuman animal and human to human.) What constitutes suffering is highly debatable, we’re not dealing with faulty RAM sticks that make the execution of operations unreliable.
The impossibility of creating clear and objective frameworks/rationality based decision-making has been a tool time and time again for repression. It starts with putting grandma out of what we or anyone who is not grandma considers to be her misery, then we go on to NICU children in dire or uncertain circumstances or individuals who can’t communicate or contribute to society, and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
cmd+f “Gnadentod”
I get what you are saying here. What is dignity, can it be quantified and codified in law? We are talking extreme cases here, and the process is vast and comprehensive. We needn’t be afraid of our mortality, and if someone “chooses” to go, or if it’s time for our loved ones to pass on because continuing is no longer worth it? How does that impact us?
Yes, it could lead to more acceptance for assisted dying, but only in cases where it is merited, and why is that a bad thing. I feel your opinion comes from a place like America, where a panel of insurance adjusters makes your medical decisions for you. In the actual free world where we have healthcare the mandates for treatment come from the physicians and the advice from medical professionals. It is far from perfect, but it is the best recommended care.
And to most of us, animals are not lesser creatures and the bonds can be just as strong. We hold onto these people for ourselves, not for them. And heck, if they are adamant about continuing the fight, maid won’t be an option for them. I wouldn’t put my cat or dog down until the fight was out of them or the pain and discomfort was too great.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against people choosing on their own accord to go. Even if I think there are caveats with that because I don’t consider people to ever be able to completely grasp their decisions and make decisions autonomously. We’re after all limited creatures. I suppose in cases of extreme disease assisted suicide non the less represents a rational personal choice.
What keeps me from supporting an institution such as MAiD is how economic pressures can greatly affect the question of who dies and who dies when. If a person has the resources to pass in a comfortable environment, like a nice home in a calm part of town, they will consider assisted suicide much later in their trajectory than the person who has hardly any next of kin and no financial resources to install, say, the necessary aids at home. The former individual does not spend their last days in a stressful hospital environment. Of all examples I could give this is probably in the category of least extreme. As long as this contradictory aspect exists MAiD and everything like it will fail to live up to promises. Off the top of my dome I’m not able to name any regions where this would not be the case, even Sweden or Switzerland have dirt-poor strata that would be negatively affected.
In the actual free world where we have healthcare the mandates for treatment come from the physicians and the advice from medical professionals. It is far from perfect, but it is the best recommended care.
I would carefully disagree here. Would freedom not mean that the recipient of medical care gets to ultimately decide? Considering the state of the world, free world is a contradiction in adjectives. Especially here. I know this is a pedantic ask with it’s scope, but I’m trying to nudge you away from a certain centrisms.
I don’t know if we have the right implementation.
What I do know is being able to choose when to die should be a human right. I’ve updated my will to give power of attorney, we just went over my wife’s parent’s will to also provide guidance for MAID. I’ve seen my grandmother not eat and die slowly over a week, and I think that’s just not fair.
Now, I also think we should:
- Stop treating disabled people like moochers, and start treating them like humans. We need to fix our benefit systems. My sister is disabled and it’s fucking stupid that she’d be worse off with a job, or that we need to set up special trusts to handle money for her.
- Stop private ownership of Long Term Care homes. Have you ever been to a fucking LTC home? They’re fucking expensive and under staffed. If you don’t have someone constantly advocating for you, you’re going to get treated like shit and ignored. it is fucking awful and it needs to end. And this is not on the staff. There are some wonderful people doing these jobs, and they’re oveworked and abused by their employers.
- Fund Mental Health treatment. We do not fund this field, we have a shortage of qualified professionals, and they charge a lot. It’s unacceptable. The government picking up the slack so that we can hire the right number of people would be a huge win.
- Cover medication in our single payer system.
- Put serious consequences for companies that try to renege pensions that leave the elderly destitute. The Bay dissolving their pensions should have resulted in jail time.
I don’t know if everywhere else in Canada is the same, but LTC in Ontario is a crime. It should have ended with Covid when they had to bring the army in to manage LTC homes.
And frankly, I think the UN with their shit morals needs to back the fuck off.
Manitoba’s premier recently expropriated a care home that was set to shut down, even after exhaustive meetings to try and come to a deal.
I am so gd glad we’ve got Wab Kinew leading us. He’s got morals and recognizes that Manitobans need good leadership after the shitshow PC Brian Pallister created.
I really respect that. The job of government is to take care of the people.
I thought it was to make money?
/s
I think the problem is that nobody knows how awful it can be until it happens to them, and then they can’t do much to advocate for themselves because alll of their energy is just being used to survive. Doesn’t help that most politicians don’t seem to give a shit too…
Yes, by the time most people want MAID they’re too far gone to get it.
That’s why it is very important to have a will.
A living will. Families default to keeping people painfully alive and the hospital-medical industry profits from it.
I know that I might get downvoted for saying this, but I think the UN is right on this one. We should stop expanding this program.
The federal government has been considering expanding MAiD so that people with mental illness as their only underlying medical condition could qualify.
Am I the only one that thinks this is going too far? I thought it was generally considered a good thing that, if someone is suffering from suicide ideation, you talk them off the ledge. That’s why we have suicide prevention programs, suicide hotlines, etc. This seems like a reversal of this attitude. It’s saying, “oh, you’re depressed, and you want to kill yourself? Okay, let’s make that easier for you.” This is not healthcare.
We also need to consider how this impacts marginalized communities, like for example Inuit communities in Nunavut, where suicide is considered a crisis .
I watched a documentary about MAID in Canada and in a European country (where they allow MAID for depression) for a philosophy of law class. One of the people in the story was a young woman who was in the process of applying for MAID because she was suicidal. By the end of the documentary she had been approved but had chosen not to go through with it yet. She was keeping her approval in her back pocket while attending counselling as provided to her by the process.
She said having the approval made her feel a lot better, like she was back in control of her life.
I think it’s important to design a process like this where you can always back out, and you always retain control.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. This thread has triggered a lot of emotions and devolved into nastiness in some parts so it was refreshing to read something well put together and measured like this
I do disagree with you a bit. MAID isn’t like a take-a-number system, I don’t think it would be aiding impulsive suicidal thoughts. There is a doctor involved who should be on the hook for how and why the call to permit MAID is handled. That’s not perfect though.
aiding impulsive suicidal thoughts
It would be aiding with suicidal thoughts, even if those thoughts are not necessarily impulsive
That’s a good point, but I think it’s where I think you need someone with intimate knowledge of the situation to decide.
To decide if the person should live or die?
Denying someone MAID is also deciding if the person should live or die. You just don’t like the “or die” part of that decision.
You are correct. I don’t trust people to decide when other people should die.
You are missing the point. You are doing that right now. You are deciding that they shouldn’t die now, but later. You are deciding when other people should die.
To decide whether their situation warrants MAID or not.
Yes, that is to decide who will live and who will die
Sure, go ahead and pretend there’s no nuance and phrase it that way.
You talk them down as many times as you can but some people will still jump in front of that subway car and ruin a few people’s lives.
Some people will, yes, but not everyone with suicidal ideation necessarily acts on it.
True, but enough do act upon it that it’s a big issue. When hope dies is when people die. The biggest problem is at provincial levels because they’re the ones who decide what mental healthcare is paid for … and right now it’s very little. Usually only psychiatrists, but not psychologists, social workers, or any other mental health specialists. Those are all out-of-pocket and it’s expensive. Nevermind remote regions who often don’t have any.
This is not on the feds because they don’t control healthcare. The provinces do, and when you’ve got provincial leaders who care more about giving away tax dollars to big business than caring for the people, dying by MAID becomes an easy solution to a provincial greed problem.
it seems to me that if were having trouble rolling out healthcare then we should focus on improving healthcare, not introducing MAiD. MAiD is not an alternative to proper mental healthcare, but I guess that’s what you’re saying?
I didn’t justify the use of MAiD. I just explained why it’s being used by poor people.
Yeah. I actually think your comment was very insightful, thank you
Canada has always had a pathetic budget to fund biomedical research, because government assumed the US would pay the bills and we just buy the drugs.
Now, the US budget is zero, and we are paying hundreds of billions for drugs we should be making locally. This amplified under Trudeau and Carney, because CDN voters don’t care. Carbon tax was the priority.
More than likely depression isn’t the mental health condition this targets.
However you need the recommending and preforming doctor to sign off on it and be deemed able to consent the day of.
If you were suicidal the day they go to do it then you’d be disqualified.
It sucks for dementia patients because they can’t sign off “when my mind goes”. They have to do it before then.
If you were suicidal the day they go to do it then you’d be disqualified.
If someone is not suicidal the day they go to do it then they won’t go through with it. Why would you choose to die if you don’t want to die? I don’t understand this sentence.
Dying on your own terms isn’t suicidal in the sense of mental illness/depression.
It is quite literally assisted suicide though
That is a massive over-simplification. MAID gives people the ability to die on their own terms.
It’s not an over-simplification that’s literally just what its called. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide
