Physician-assisted death has been on the rise in Canada, and a new report has revealed that people who request assisted death through the country’s Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) program are being killed at a rapid pace.
According to the report, “From Exceptional to Routine: The Rise of Euthanasia in Canada,” the number of MAiD deaths have skyrocketed in the nation, and they’re being carried out at a disturbing pace. The report was compiled by Alexander Raikin, a visiting fellow in bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, and it raised several issues with MAiD in Canada since its implementation in 2015.
Rankin noted that MAiD has now become the expected outcome for anyone who requests it.
“MAiD is now far more than exceptional: it is routine. Almost no MAiD requests are denied by clinicians, and the median time between written request and death from MAiD in 2022 was merely eleven days,” he wrote (emphasis added). “Despite judges’ and policymakers’ claims or expectations, MAiD is no longer an option of ‘last resort.'”
That means it takes less than two weeks for a person to die by physician-assisted death after requesting MAiD.
Since being legalized, MAiD has become the fifth leading cause of death in Canada, tied with cardiovascular disease, and behind only cancer, heart disease, COVID-19, and accidents. In 2016, the first year MAiD was available, just 1,018 people died. That number is now 13 times higher, with 13,241 people killed through MAiD in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.
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The number of people being urged to die in lieu of receiving medical treatment is being heavily criticized; one woman with cerebral palsy was repeatedly told it was better for her to die than to live with a disability. Others have requested assisted death because of poverty, housing problems, or an inability to access health care. This has led one social scientist to warn that MAiD doctors are, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from health care serial killers (HSKs).
“Clinicians involved in HSK typically target patients with the same clinical features as MAiD-eligible patients,” Christopher Lyon wrote. “They may draw on similar rationales, e.g., to end perceived patient suffering and provide pleasure for the clinician. HSK can remain undetected or unconfirmed for considerable periods owing to a lack of staff background checks, poor surveillance and oversight, and a failure by authorities to act on concerns from colleagues, patients, or witnesses.”
