'MPs didn't know what they were signing up to. Now they have to lose face'. Assisted Episode 6
This is our third discussion with the experts who can tell us how Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying panned out. Tonight we speak with two doctors who know more about MAID than they ever would have dreamed. Chelsea and Fiona welcome:
Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London, Ontario. She is also a member of the Ontario Chief Coroner’s MAID Death Review Committee, and so is one of the few people to see the data on the true outcomes of MAID.
Professor Leonie Herx, a palliative care doctor, clinical professor at the University of Calgary, and recent president of the Canadian Palliative Care Association.
Each has seen how MAID unfolded and how it affects the practice of medicine, attitudes to suffering and dying, and most importantly, their patients. They tell stories that lay out the human costs of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying.
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Leonie and Ramona discuss:
That Canadians were told assisted dying would only be for exceptional cases
How safeguards quickly become barriers
How the MAID ‘providers’ interpreted the law so that even more people could die: including Ellen Wiebe’s use of actuarial tables to estimate life expectancy of her patients and justify their access to death.
The lobbying efforts of Canada’s well funded Dying with Dignity organisation also covered in “The Lobby Group That Owns the Conversation around Assisted Deaths”
That it’s not true to say that MAID has seen an increase in quality and resourcing of palliative care: in fact some palliative care budgets now deliver MAID
Instead of suicide prevention, patients will be sent away with a MAID phone number
That it may take months or years for their patients to get disability support, but a MAID assessment is available in 3 days
Ramona’s work with the Ontario Chief Coroner MAID Death Review Board: reports here
The shocking rise in widows seeking an assisted death
How coercion and domestic abuse emerges over months of time with a patient: compared to the 90 minutes MAID assessors will spend over the phone with them
