Brittany Maynard's Story Sends the Wrong Message to Young People

Will Johnston, MD

Dear Editor:

I agree with the Gazette editorial board that legal assisted suicide sends the wrong message to young people. ("Vote 'no' on more suicide," 09/26/16). I also write to describe the damaging impact of the highly publicized case of Brittany Maynard, on my young adult patient who became actively suicidal after watching her video. I understand that her story is now being used to promote assisted suicide legalization in Colorado.

WE WON!!!!

EUTHANASIA PREVENTION COALITION APPLAUDS RULING OF BC APPEAL COURT ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

Media Release - Toronto, Thursday October 10, 2013 /CNW/

The BC Court of Appeal has struck down the decision by Justice Smith and upheld the current laws which protect Canadians from euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) intervened in the BC assisted suicide case in order to uphold the principles of Parliamentary sovereignty and basic human rights. EPC is pleased that the Court has followed the lead of Canadian Parliament, the Supreme Court of Canada, and of the majority of Parliaments and Supreme Courts around the world in finding that the prohibitions against assisted suicide represent an important protection against abuse of vulnerable people.

EPC legal counsel Hugh Scher states:

EPC is concerned about the safety, security and equality of people with disabilities and seniors, which is central to the protections set out under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our Criminal Code. 

EPC-BC chair Dr. Will Johnston states:

The debate is over whether what the suicidal person proposes – to kill themselves – is a goal which should be shared and facilitated by the state. I suggest there are alternate goals like the treatment of depression and other symptoms, to which the state should apply itself. When someone has lost hope for the future, finds no meaning in their life, and sees only one solution – death – we recognize a suicidal depression. That bleak tunnel vision should evoke suicide prevention, not euthanasia.

Disability rights advocate Amy Hasbrouck of Toujours Vivant - Not Dead Yet states:

People with disabilities, chronic illness and seniors are negatively affected by assisted suicide and euthanasia because it leads to the impression that our lives are lacking in meaning and value as compared to other Canadians.

EPC Executive Director, Alex Schadenberg states:

The evidence is clear that in jurisdictions where these practices have been legalized, there have been significant abuses of vulnerable people. For example, studies in Belgium demonstrate that 32% of people killed under the Belgian law were killed without consent and without their own request, in breach of a fundamental condition of that law. 

Not one of these doctors has been prosecuted.

In the event today's ruling is appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, EPC will seek to intervene with a view to protecting the dignity and equality of all Canadians, particularly those who are most vulnerable to the risks of abuse from assisted suicide.

Please consider a generous donation to help us cover expenses and to prepare for the next round.  Thank you for your support!  To donate, click here.

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Will Johnston, (Vancouver) EPC-BC Chair: (604) 220-2042 – willjohnston@shaw.ca

Alex Schadenberg, (London) EPC Executive Director: (519) 851-1434 – info@epcc.ca

Amy Hasbrouck, (Montreal) Tourjours Vivant - Not Dead Yet: (450) 921-3057 – info@tv-ndy.ca

Assisted Suicide's Dangerous Illusion of Control

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/Johnston+Assisted+suicide+dangerous+illusion+control/7716999/story.html

By Will Johnston, MD

The daughters are beside themselves. One sat in my office recently, telling me about her father’s trips to the bank that are draining his savings. He gets angry when his daughters challenge him.

The money — thousands of dollars, slowly saved from a meagre pension and needed for his care — seems to be going to a recently acquired girlfriend some years younger than himself. He speaks almost no English. The situation was detected by chance when a daughter gave him a ride to the bank and saw his bank book.

Some time ago, I performed a competency assessment on a socially isolated older person who had been placed in a nursing home. An unrelated neighbour had listed the person’s home for sale and was receiving inquiries before a relative became aware.

On another occasion, an older woman had adequate resources to stay in her attractive home and employ a live-in caregiver. A family member, an heir and beneficiary, arranged to have her met at her door by an ambulance crew with a gurney. She was told that if she did not co-operate, the police would be called. She submitted and was transported to a dingy nursing home that she described as a prison. Her home was sold.

A colleague recalls being on duty in an emergency room several years ago when an older bachelor came in desperately ill and confused, accompanied by his niece and nephew.

“He’s had a good life. He wouldn’t want any treatment,” his only relatives (and presumably heirs) attested. With ordinary care and rehydration, the older man walked out of hospital a week later.

Each of these scenarios is different, and none of them grace a research paper, but all of them are the real face of elder abuse. I could list 10 more from my own experience. Government of Canada policy recognizes the epidemic of elder abuse and the unusual difficulty of detecting it, often because the victim resists the revelation of abuse.

I routinely see people induced to do things and accept arrangements that are contrary to their own interests. People can be surprisingly naive.

High profile assisted suicide cases might at first seem to be about another kind of person, a sophisticated and clear-minded sort, immune to undue influence. I suggest that this presumption is also naive.

We all take our cues from those around us. It only takes a few words to promote suicide. If the law is changed, an obligation to mention the legal fact of assisted suicide will be created. Some patients will experience even the most perfunctory acknowledgment of assisted suicide as an inducement to it.
If state-sanctioned suicide becomes part of the atmosphere in our hospitals, a presumption in that direction will be created. I predict the same erosion of medical diligence that many of us on the front lines have already watched happen when caregivers choose to see a patient as having finished all useful life. How much more will this be the case when the patient’s present fear and loss of hope feed smoothly into an official assisted-suicide regime?

Some people would throw away months or years of life, and some would miss good medical care or medical advances they would have wanted to enjoy.

Consider the case of Jeanette Hall, who wanted to use Oregon’s assisted suicide law and is grateful, 12 years later, that her doctor directed her toward treatment rather than suicide.

One of Dr. Ken Stevens’ Oregonian patients was not so lucky — part way into his cancer treatment, he became despondent and was given suicide pills by another doctor.

I know someone, happy to be alive, who had alarming symptoms and a clear diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease more than a decade ago. The symptoms inexplicably resolved. Huntington’s disease, a factor in a recent high-profile suicide in Toronto, moved closer to a treatment recently in a stem cell experiment.

If a legal assisted suicide offer is always dangling, variations in the competence and diligence of doctors create arbitrary forces that move choice and control to others, not the patient.

When you or your loved one goes to the hospital, you need to be able to trust that an assisted-suicide-minded doctor or nurse will not be steering you or them toward death. People can be offered the illusion of control and autonomy when the choices are really being shaped by others.

When empowered medical personnel — and right-to-die activists — choose their own opinions about your quality of life, and have been given constitutional protection to counsel, facilitate and steer you toward suicide, you and your loved ones will not be safe.

The choices created by legal assisted suicide may end up being someone else’s, not yours. The speculative legal changes being offered are dangerous and irresponsible. Parliament rejected them firmly two years ago. We will all be safer if our courts do the same.

Dr. Will Johnston is chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of BC
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Johnston+Assisted+suicide+dangerous+illusion+control/7716999/story.html#ixzz2GZkbdvWG

Assisted suicide opens the door to grave abuses of elderly

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1287933--assisted-suicide-opens-the-door-to-grave-abuses-of-elderly

Derek Miedema, November 14, 2012

Canadians can watch disturbing videos on a government website warning about elder abuse — an elderly man is pushed to move faster, an adult child steals money from a grandmother’s wallet. 

However, just as some still turn a blind eye to the fact that elder abuse is happening, proponents of assisted suicide refuse to connect the dots between legalized assisted suicide and the potential for serious abuse.

The National Post: "The Wrong Decision on Assisted Suicide"

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/18/will-johnston-the-wrong-decision-on-assisted-suicide/

On June 15, the British Columbia Supreme Court rendered a controversial judgment in the case of Carter vs. Canada, one that purports to create constitutional immunity for those who provide assistance to those seeking to kill themselves — a judgment that stands at odds with the Supreme Court of Canada’s Rodriguez ruling in 1993. The only saving grace is that doctors will not be scribbling lethal prescriptions any day soon: Current law will stand for at least a year (the sole exception being the plaintiff in this case, 64-year-old ALS patient Gloria Taylor). Let us hope that a higher court restores sanity to the issue before this 12-month period expires.

The Leblanc Case: A Recipe for Elder Abuse and a Threat to the Individual

Margaret Dore

January 26, 2012

"Those who believe that legal assisted
suicide/euthanasia will assure their

autonomy and choice are naive."

William Reichel, MD

Montreal Gazette,

May 30, 2010[1]

A.  Introduction

Leblanc vs. Attorney General of Canada brings a constitutional challenge to Canada's law prohibiting aiding or abetting a suicide.  Leblance also seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia as a medical treatment.  In 2010, a bill in the Canadian Parliament seeking a similar result was overwhelmingly defeated. 

Legalization of assisted suicide and/or euthanasia under Leblanc will create new paths of elder abuse.  This is contrary to Canadian public policy.  Legalization will also empower the health care system to the detriment of individual patients.

The Carter Case and Assisted Suicide: A Recipe for Elder Abuse and a Threat to Individual Rights

For shorter print versions of this article, click here and here.
For talking points, click here.

Will Johnston, MD

Margaret Dore, JD
Alex Schadenberg
November 1, 2011

"Those who believe that legal

assisted suicide . . . will assure their
autonomy and choice are naive."

William Reichel, MD

Montreal Gazette,

May 30, 2010[1]

A.  Introduction

Carter vs. Attorney General of Canada brings a constitutional challenge to Canada's laws prohibiting assisted suicide and euthanasia.[2]  Carter also seeks to legalize these practices as a medical treatment.[3]  Last year, a bill in Parliament seeking a similar result was overwhelmingly defeated.[4] 

This article's focus is physician-assisted suicide.

Legalizing this practice would be a recipe for elder abuse.  Legalization would also empower the Canadian health care system to the detriment of individual patient rights.  There would be other problems.

B.  Parliament Rejected Assisted Suicide

On April 21, 2010, Parliament defeated Bill C-384, which would have legalized physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada.[5]  The vote was 228 to 59.[6]C.  The Carter Case

"How exactly are we going to detect the victimization when we can’t do it now?"

Dear Editor:

Patrick Stewart concedes that legalizing assisted suicide would be a problem if “you can bump off your old granny.” [“Spare the dying . . .,” Oct. 15].  This is a major reason why assisted suicide must not be legalized in Canada.  As a Vancouver family doctor I see elder abuse in my practice, often perpetrated by family members and caregivers.  A desire for money or an inheritance is typical.  To make it worse, the victims protect the perpetrators.  In one case, an older woman knew that her son was robbing her blind and lied to protect him.  Why? Family loyalty, shame, and fear that confronting the abuser will cost love and care.

The result: elder abuse is often a hidden and unreported situation.  Indeed, a 2008 government poll found that “96% of Canadians think most of the abuse experienced by adults is hidden or goes undetected.” [1]    

Under current law, abusers take their victims to the bank and to the lawyer for a new will.  With legal assisted suicide, the next stop would be the doctor’s office for a lethal prescription.  How exactly are we going to detect the victimization when we can’t do it now?

Will Johnston   MD

Chair
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of BC

[1]  For the poll source, scroll down at this link: http://www.seniors.gc.ca/c.4nt.2nt@.jsp?lang=eng&geo=110&cid=154#f