{"id":1829,"date":"2016-10-14T15:08:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tvndy.ca\/?p=1829\/"},"modified":"2018-11-01T21:29:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T21:29:58","slug":"webcast-archive-ontarios-maid-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-ontarios-maid-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Webcast archive: Ontario\u2019s MAID report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1180\" height=\"664\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pX5PLvHu9xs?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>Ontario\u2019s report on medical aid in dying: What\u2019s missing?<\/li>\n<li>Assisted suicides in Switzerland increase in 2014 and 2015<\/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>ONTARIO MEDICAL AID IN DYING REPORT: WHAT\u2019S MISSING?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario has released the first statistics for the euthanasia\/assisted dying program in Ontario for the period of June 6 through September 30, 2016.\u00a0 They reported a total of 79 euthanasia and assisted suicides.<\/li>\n<li>The report does not include the 13 court-authorized euthanasia that were performed in Ontario between February 6 and June 6, bringing the total to 92.<\/li>\n<li>Toronto\u2019s Globe and Mail stated in an article on October 6 that 95 people had died by assisted suicide or euthanasia in Ontario since February 6.\u00a0 Other news outlets put the total at 87 or 89.<\/li>\n<li>The report, which is presented as a one-page power-point slide, begins by breaking down the 79 assisted death by type (77 euthanasia and 2 assisted suicides).\u00a0 The \u201cUnderlying [medical] condition\u201d is listed next, without reference to the nature of the \u201cintolerable suffering\u201d experienced by the person.\u00a0 Without this information we can\u2019t know who may have been rendered vulnerable to inducement to commit suicide by their circumstances.<\/li>\n<li>The categories of underlying condition are:\n<ul>\n<li>Cancer-Related \u2013 50<\/li>\n<li>ALS \u2013 9<\/li>\n<li>Other neurological \u2013 10<\/li>\n<li>Cardio-vascular\/Respiratory \u2013 6<\/li>\n<li>Other \u2013 4<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Neither the \u201cother neurological\u201d nor the \u201cother\u201d category (totalling 14 cases) are specified.\u00a0 This is important because there are many neurological conditions (such as multiple sclerosis, mental illness and autism) that might not make someone eligible for assisted suicide but for which people have been granted euthanasia in other jurisdictions.<\/li>\n<li>According to the report, 40 people died in hospital, and 39 people died \u201cat home\u201d where \u201chome\u201d is defined to include nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.\u00a0 This statistic should be broken down further to specify how many people lived in institutions, to give an indication as to whether their living situation might have made them vulnerable to inducement to commit suicide.<\/li>\n<li>The number of assisted suicide and euthanasia cases is then broken down by County, with the largest numbers occurring in Toronto (24) and Ottawa (8) while most other counties had less than five each.<\/li>\n<li>And that\u2019s it; that\u2019s all the information provided.\u00a0 This is a simple coroner\u2019s report.<\/li>\n<li>There is no demographic information about the people who were euthanized, no information to show whether the safeguards in the law were complied with, no information about the doctors who performed euthanasia.<\/li>\n<li>There\u2019s no way to ensure that all doctors who performed euthanasia actually filled out the correct paperwork and submitted the report to federal authorities.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what, if any, information will be collected and provided by the federal government in future reports about the progress of the medical aid in dying program.<\/li>\n<li>What we have is information that was taken from death reports sent to Ontario\u2019s Coroner\u2019s office.\u00a0 This report does not show whether the cause of death was listed as medical aid in dying or the underlying medical condition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>ASSISTED SUICIDE IN SWITZERLAND INCREASES IN 2014 AND 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to an article at Swissinfo.ch, the latest numbers on assisted suicides in Switzerland show a 26% increase in the year 2014. The vast majority of those who died by assisted suicide were terminally ill.\u00a0 The article can be found at http:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/latest-statistics_assisted-suicides-increase-in-switzerland\/42508452.<\/li>\n<li>The Federal Statistical Office reports that in 2014 Switzerland had 742 cases of assisted suicide, more than 2.5 times as many as in 2009, five years earlier. In 2014, assisted suicide accounted for 1.2% of all deaths in Switzerland.<\/li>\n<li>Men and women were nearly equally represented in the assisted suicide numbers.<\/li>\n<li>In 42% of cases, assisted suicides followed illnesses related to cancer. Neurodegenerative disorders led to 14% of assisted suicides, followed by cardiovascular illnesses at 11% and musculoskeletal maladies at 10%.\u00a0 The Swissinfo article did not explain what \u201cmusculoskeletal\u201d maladies meant.<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0Exit suicide clinic reported a 34% increase in 2015; from 583 assisted suicide deaths in 2014 to 782 in 2015. Deaths from the other Swiss suicide clinics in 2015 have not yet been reported.<\/li>\n<li>The Exit suicide clinic report indicated that of the assisted suicide deaths in 2015,\u00a055% were women and 45% were men.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n   ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\n<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nThis week, we analyze some new assisted suicide data from Ontario.\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-ontarios-maid-report\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Webcast archive: Ontario\u2019s MAID report&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/2016\/10\/webcast-archive-ontarios-maid-report\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Webcast archive: Ontario\u2019s MAID report&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":[121,303,184,190,118],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-webcast-archive","tag-euthanasia-disability","tag-ontario","tag-statistics","tag-switzerland","tag-webcast","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","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=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3628,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/3628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvndy.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}