The problems with MAID in context.
Human euthanasia cannot be considered as a standalone question, because like everything else, it has to exist in the worst societal contexts - some that are a reality right now.
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I’ve seen a lot of people with chronic illness from Long Covid and other disabilities concerned that MAID will come to replace disability accommodations, assistance, and benefits. I think this is a rational concern considering the everlasting fight to end any help for the poor or misfortunate. And I think it’s wrong to woke-wash and tone police these concerns as if they are just an attack on the autonomy of the terminally ill. I do believe there are people with terminal conditions who are seeking more options at the end, and that's legitimate and entirely understandable.
But even so, how humane are current euthanasia options? Do we even know?
To Britain on Legalizing Assisted Dying: Proceed With Caution — Canada offers a cautionary tale by Joel Zivot, MD, MA, JM, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today December 26, 2024 In Canada, the majority of assisted suicide is done via an injection of substantial dosages of the anesthetic agents propofol, midazolam, and the paralytic rocuronium. Propofol and midazolam are likely not the cause of death. Instead, it is most likely the rocuronium, leading to death by muscle paralysis. Once paralyzed, MAID deaths will appear outwardly calm and peaceful. However, this is essentially death by asphyxiation. The U.S. death penalty commonly uses an intravenous cocktail known as lethal injection. This cocktail is strikingly similar to Canadian MAID. Studies show lethal injection can cause rapid accumulation of fluid in the lungs -- prisoners feel they are drowning as they die. Far from dignified, death by MAID may be highly distressing.
My concern about even animal euthanasia has been: How sure are we that the animal is completely unconscious and unaware and not just non-responsive from our perspective? I’d hoped that someone had done a study observing brain waves or something - that’s definitely a thing, it’s possible to measure consciousness these days as well as pain in the brain, that’s a real medical technological capability. I just assumed if this method of death was being approved for humans that this would’ve been studied in some way. But if so, then why is lethal injection considered so inhumane for criminal executions? It’s not just about the subjects of execution being killed against their will because there are people in support of capital punishment who nevertheless object to this calling it torture. Some medical experts compare it to waterboarding. If they can’t come up with a legal and humane way to do lethal injection for criminal executions, how do we imagine it’s not horrendous for people receiving euthanasia? I’m not the only one apparently wondering - where is the science-based research? Apparently a research engineer has written about this being an unanswered question.
Research Outreach - June 1, 2020 Euthanasia: A neuropsychiatric researcher raises concerns In particular, Campbell believes that the lack of brain response monitoring in patients undergoing euthanasia raises important ethical, medical and legal questions. Normally, clinical or pharmaceutical decisions are based on specific, clearly defined data obtained by monitoring patients, with the goal of preventing suffering and reducing the risk of errors in diagnosis. However, these data are not considered in decisions on medical euthanasia. This absence allows the possibility of a patient suffering pain during euthanasia – the opposite of what is offered as a peaceful, pain-free death.
Frankly I think we need more evidence-based research on the humaneness of animal euthanasia methods.
But even if one was reasonably sure the death to be distress free, even if that was medically proven. There are also serious moral social concerns.
In the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, there’s clearly been something of a global trend toward the eugenics of the inappropriately named Great Barrington Declaration model of anti public health governance. I think that makes euthanasia at least somewhat of a dangerous thing to put on the table as a tool for the ruling class to offer to the working class, poor, troubled, elderly, and disabled.
Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths 12 Dec 2024 Nadine Yousif BBC News, Toronto Like the UK, Canada initially only legalised assisted dying for those whose death was "reasonably foreseeable". However, Canada expanded access in 2021 to people who may not have a terminal diagnosis, but want to end their life because of a chronic, debilitating condition. It was set to broaden access once again to people with mental illnesses earlier this year. But that was delayed for the second time after concerns were raised by Canadian provinces, which oversee healthcare delivery, about whether the system could cope with such an expansion.
Mental illness is a wide range of conditions, some which have suicidal tendency as a treatable symptom. It seems to me that giving people euthanasia for suicidal impulse from mental illness is like amputating a diabetic’s healthy legs in advance because the amputation is “reasonably foreseeable” if they don’t treat the diabetes, instead of just treating the diabetes.
It may seem really out there to think that this could come to pass, but unfortunately “euthanasia” was the term they used for the systematic mass killings of the mentally disabled in Nazi Germany. The demonizing of people who are unemployed for whatever reason including serious illness, and the trend toward delegitimizing needing time to recover from illness during an ongoing pandemic where so many people need sick leave from work, and are not afforded that, and the recent pushes in the U.S. to claim that Social Security isn’t possible, should make everyone concerned about the alternatives that will be proposed just so that wealthy don’t have to pay taxes or extra for goods and services in order that working people can get retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, pensions, paid sick leave, or disability benefits. If you haven’t seen the movie “Soylent Green” - I recommend it. Because I think I hear someone not too far in the distance on a bullhorn shouting: “The scoops are on the way, the scoops are on the way.”