{"id":1824,"date":"2016-10-07T15:03:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T15:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tvndy.ca\/?p=1824\/"},"modified":"2018-11-01T21:40:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T21:40:52","slug":"webcast-archive-unintended-victims-of-euthanasia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-unintended-victims-of-euthanasia\/","title":{"rendered":"Webcast archive: Unintended victims of euthanasia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1180\" height=\"664\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ymUSnorDR_8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In this episode of <em>Euthanasia &amp; Disability<\/em>, Amy Hasbrouck and Christian Debray discuss:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unintended victims of euthanasia and assisted suicide<\/li>\n<li>Conscience rights and palliative care<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please note that this text is only a script and that our webcast contains additional commentary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UNINTENDED VICTIMS OF EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A recent article in the Huffington Post by Dr. Will Johnston describes two of the unintended, and probably ineligible victims, of the new euthanasia law in Canada.\u00a0 (The article can be found at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/will-johnston\/assisted-dying_b_12168266.html\">http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/will-johnston\/assisted-dying_b_12168266.html<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Johnston tells the story of a friend whose neighbour told her his wife was going to get assisted suicide. \u201cThe neighbour said they would be going to a doctor in Vancouver to get this done. This baffled [the] friend, who had seen the woman outside her home, gardening. The neighbour made other comments suggesting that his wife would be dead soon. She had heart trouble.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The friend tipped off her own nurse to get community services involved and the suicidal woman&#8217;s depression began to be addressed by a nurse and social worker. This apparently able-bodied woman did not go to Vancouver right away.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Johnston\u2019s friend continues the story. &#8220;A few days later, in early June, the husband came over with a clipboard and a pen. He started by saying, \u2018Damn government did not pass the [euthanasia] bill.\u2019\u00a0 He asked me to sign a form \u2013 that he needed two signatures for the doctor in Vancouver. He stated that none of their family and friends would sign.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI told him I would not sign. He assumed that it was on religious grounds and I said \u2018no it was experiential.\u2019 He said \u2018OK, then I will ask your husband.\u2019 I told him he had better not even bring it up!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>After the designated day of the euthanasia, the friend noted the neighbour\u2019s balcony was draped in black crepe.<\/li>\n<li>When she bumped into him at the mailbox, the neighbour \u201ccomplained that none of the neighbours had given condolences even though he made it obvious that [his wife] had \u2018passed.\u2019 He said that his wife had a nice last day, that she liked the walk around the seawall.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>According to Dr. Johnston, this appears to be medical homicide as a solution to depression, apparently facilitated by a husband with other interests.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Johnston tells of a second case. \u201cSeveral weeks ago I was contacted by the wife of a young man with a neurological disease. The man had been assured by a euthanasia-performing doctor in Vancouver that he qualified for an assisted suicide. He was depressed and never ventured outdoors.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cAt the patient&#8217;s invitation I visited him in his shared room in a dingy nursing home, a place once described to me as \u2018a prison.\u2019 He told me about his struggle to find a cure with massive doses of vitamins. He was less disabled than, for instance,\u00a0Walter Lawrence, who works in Vancouver as a peer counsellor to spinal-cord injured people and others.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cBut this patient had lost hope for the future and felt his existence was meaningless and that death was the only solution. This death-focused tunnel vision\u00a0defines\u00a0a suicidal depression, and any able-bodied person would be given psychological help to relieve it. This disabled man, who was nowhere near dying, was instead killed by a Vancouver physician.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe physician&#8217;s rationale for circumventing the law, reportedly given over the phone before she met or examined the patient, was that he could easily get bed sores and then die of infection, so that his death &#8220;was reasonably foreseeable.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat surprised his wife was \u2018how easy\u2019 it was for her depressed, self-isolated husband to be killed under the new regime. What seems obvious is that the whole context of this death is not going to be reported to the Minister of Health or the Minister of Justice \u2013 there is no transparency to this system.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Johnston concludes: \u201cFive years from now, the mandatory report is going to be full of bland and self-justifying statistics presented by the very doctors who have done the killing. By sanitizing these medicalized suicides and homicides with the now-familiar euphemisms about &#8220;medical aid in dying,&#8221; doctors will reassure the uninvolved public that nothing has gone wrong.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>People who support euthanasia often say opponents\u2019 fears about medical aid in dying are exaggerated.\u00a0 These are two cases where people who were seemingly ineligible \u2013 because they were vulnerable persons being induced to commit suicide based on their circumstances, and whose deaths did not appear to be reasonably foreseeable \u2013 were nevertheless killed.\u00a0 But without the context of detailed information about their deaths, and people to care about that context, they will disappear into what Dr. Johnston calls the \u201cbland statistics.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>We need more articles like Dr. Johnston\u2019s.\u00a0 Hopefully family, friends, neighbours, medical professionals, and others to tell the stories behind the statistics so we can understand the real consequences of euthanasia and assisted suicide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>CONSCIENCE RIGHTS AND PALLIATIVE CARE<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Ontario College of Physicians and Fraser Health in British Columbia are putting pressure on physicians to administer euthanasia, in violation of their conscience rights.<\/li>\n<li>While this may seem, at first glance, to be an issue for doctors to deal with, it affects anyone who wants to be secure that their doctor will protect them from subtle pressure to have euthanasia or assisted suicide.<\/li>\n<li>In British Columbia, Fraser Health Authority is putting pressure on hospices to perform euthanasia and assisted suicide on their premises.\u00a0 This is a violation of the principles of hospice, to neither accelerate nor delay death.\u00a0 If hospices are forced to perform euthanasia, they will no longer be places where people can feel secure against hastened death.<\/li>\n<li>Meanwhile, the Ontario College of Physicians has decided that doctors who refuse to perform euthanasia must refer their patients to someone who will euthanize them.\u00a0 Forcing the doctors to refer their patients for death will negate their conscience right not to kill their patients.\u00a0 It will also disrupt the trust between doctor and patient, when a patient can\u2019t be sure the doctor will always work to save her life.<\/li>\n<li>You can help preserve doctors\u2019 conscience rights and the safety of palliative care by writing to the college of physicians in your province.\u00a0 For more information, email TVNDY at info@tv-ndy.ca.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n   ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nThis week, we look at an article by Dr. Will Johnston in the Huffington Post.\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-unintended-victims-of-euthanasia\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Webcast archive: Unintended victims of euthanasia&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-unintended-victims-of-euthanasia\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Webcast archive: Unintended victims of euthanasia&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[41,43,121,118],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-webcast-archive","tag-disability-en","tag-euthanasia-en","tag-euthanasia-disability","tag-webcast","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}