Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Oh, Canada!
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Remember when Euthanasia was billed as a way for those with a terminal disease to “die with dignity” and not a license to kill patients who have changed their mind and don’t want to die after all.
Yeah, about that…
“The advance assisted death directed would have to be authorized by the patient while they are still mentally able to decide. However, family members who disagree with their loved one’s decision would ‘not have a veto,’ a committee member said at the meeting. Opponents of the measure also say that if someone were to change their mind, they could have no way of stopping their own death.
“In the event a person suffers from a disease where they could lose their decision-making abilities, the Canadian panel recommended that patients formally designate a third party while they are still mentally capacitated who would inform doctors of the existence of a prior consent to be euthanized. The third party authorization would be kept in a government registry.
“That third party would represent the patient should they lose their faculties due to diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia, but the final decision to euthanize the patient would rest in the hands of a physician.”
Apparently Canada’s Alzheimer’s Society wants to end cancer the way Iceland ended Downs Syndrome: Through Death.
“Canada is debating whether to permit euthanasia by advance directive, meaning, allowing people to sign instructions requiring they be killed by their doctor once they reach a determined level of incompetence. In other words, a former self will be given the power to order their current self dispatched — even, presumably, if the current self is not suffering and may not want to die.
“We can tell which way that debate is going with the Alzheimer’s Society Canada endorsing such a legal change. From the Society’s press release:
“’People living with dementia are individuals — first and foremost. They have the same rights as everyone else, including the right to participate in decisions about their life and care. We respect the right of all persons with dementia to advocate for their individual best interests, including advocating for MAID [medical assistance in dying, e.g., lethal injection] through advance requests.’
“So, in Canada, helpless people with dementia are about to become a killable caste with the cooperation of an organization that supposedly advocates for their welfare.”
Hospices are supposed to be a place for the dying to receive the support and comfort in their final days…unless you are in Canada where they could become execution camps.
“Euthanasia is more than just legal in Canada. It has become a government-guaranteed right.
“But how to guarantee that the legally qualified who want to die are made dead? Unless the government establishes killing centers out of Soylent Green, it will have to coerce doctors into doing the killing — as has been done in Ontario. And, it will have to force medical facilities into allowing euthanasia on premises, whether their administators like it or not.
“Such an imposition is now taking place in British Columbia, where the Dignity Hospice board of directors are standing tall for the hospice philosophy of caring — but never killing — by refusing to permit euthanasia in the facililty. In response, the BC Health Minister is threatening to restrict funding in the single-payer system, which, ironically, would undercut the facilities ability to care optimally for their patients who don’t want to be killed.”
TTFN.
