Month: December 2022

Canada and the Euthanasia Endgame

nancyvalko assisted suicide, disability, education, end-of-life, euthanasia, law, Living wills, medical ethics, pro-life

Several nations like Belgium and the Netherlands have had legalized assisted suicide and/or euthanasia, even for minors and for people just “tired of life” But now the worst is Canada which legally approved MAiD (medical aid in dying) it in 2016, according to Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Alex Schadenberg quotes Kevin Yuill, a professor who spoke at the Euthanasia Symposium in Brussel in November who said:

“Canada has the dubious honour of being the global capital of euthanasia. Through its medical assistance in dying (MAID) programme, Canada killed more people with lethal injections last year than any other country on Earth – many of them poor, homeless or hopeless. And soon, from March 2023, lethal injections will be offered to anyone who judges their mental-health difficulties to be intolerable.”

Even worse, some people with disabilities are saying that they are being pressured to take a lethal overdose.

In a November 2022 UK article titled “Canadian man alleges hospital is pressuring him to end his life by assisted suicide”, a man with a disease affecting his brain and muscles is suing his Canadian hospital after secretly recording the hospital staff, stating:

“They asked if I want an assisted death. I don’t. I was told that I would be charged $1,800 per day [for hospital care]. I have $2 million worth of bills. Nurses here told me that I should end my life. That shocked me”.

Mr. Foley has applied for “direct funding” from the Canadian government to “employ agency workers of his own choosing and manage his schedule”.

  

The article also cited “a pro-assisted suicide and euthanasia group of doctors in Canada have recently said that doctors have a “professional obligation” to initiate discussion of assisted suicide and euthanasia with patients who might fit the legal criteria. They claim there is nothing in Canadian law which forbids this.”

CANADIAN STATISTICS

The UK article also notes that:

“In 2021, 10,064 people ended their lives by assisted suicide and euthanasia, an increase of over 32% from the previous year, accounting for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada.

According to the latest report on Medical Assistance in Dying from Health Canada, 17.3% of people also cited “isolation or loneliness” as a reason for wanting to die. In 35.7% of cases, patients believed that they were a “burden on family, friends or caregivers”. (Emphasis added)

Canada was set to approve MAiD for people with mental illness but recently, the Canadian government announced its plan to temporarily delay MAiD eligibility  for people whose sole medical condition is mental illness.

CONCLUSION

In 1993, just 3 years after Nancy Cruzan, a woman in a so-called “vegetative state” died a long 12 days after her feeding tube was removed in my home state of Missouri, a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a prominent ethicist and one of the future architects of Obamacare, acknowledged that the actual proof purported to show that the Cruzan case met Missouri law requiring “clear and convincing evidence” that Ms. Cruzan would not want to live in a so-called “vegetative” state rested only on “fairly vague and insubstantial comments to other people”.

Ominously, he also noted that:

“..increasingly it will be our collective determination as to what lives are worth living that will decide how incompetent patients are treated. We need to begin to articulate and justify these collective determinations.” (Emphasis added.)

“(O)ur collective determination as to what lives are worth living” is the very real and frightening potential endgame of legalized euthanasia and it should be stopped now!

How Accurate Is Prenatal Testing?

nancyvalko abortion, disability, hospice, law, medical, medical ethics, palliative care, terminal/palliative sedation

I have written about the alleged accuracy of prenatal blood testing before as both a nurse and a mother in my blog “A Dark Side of Prenatal Testing” and “Two Wonderful Stories: A Prenatal Misdiagnosis; Man Saves Grandchild from Abortion”.

Now, ProPublica, a self-described nonprofit investigative newsroom, just published an article titled “They Trusted Their Prenatal Test. They Didn’t Know the Industry Is an Unregulated “Wild West.”

The authors tell the story of a mother who had an in vitro diagnostic test (IDT) that came back negative, meaning her baby did not have the serious conditions that were tested for.

However, when the mom delivered her daughter, the baby had serious problems and only lived 28 hours.

The autopsy showed that the baby had an extra 13th chromosome, a condition that was part of the testing. The chances that the baby would have not have this or two other serious conditions was “greater than 99%.”

The test was a simple blood draw designed to check for an array of genetic anomalies but the mother, a science researcher, read academic articles showing a higher risk of inaccurate results than she realized.

The mom found other women reporting problems with the tests also so she tried contacting the company that made the test, hoping she would help other families.

She was unsuccessful.

She found out that if she had taken other common commercial tests like some for Covid-19 or pregnancy, the company would have had to inform the US Food and Drug Administration about “reports of so-called adverse events.”

The mom found out that the test she took fell into a regulatory void:

“No federal agency checks to make sure these prenatal screenings work the way they claim before they’re sold to health care providers. The FDA doesn’t ensure that marketing claims are backed up by evidence before screenings reach patients. And companies aren’t required to publicly report instances of when the tests get it wrong — sometimes catastrophically.

The broader lab testing industry and its lobbyists have successfully fought for years to keep it this way, cowing regulators into staying on the sidelines.”

The stakes are high for families with the article stating:

 “Upwards of half of all pregnant people (sic) now receive one of these prenatal screenings.”

And that the companies stress that “ultimately, it’s the responsibility of health care providers, who order the tests, to inform patients about the limits of screenings.”

CONCLUSION

When I had my last child in 1985, I was offered but refused amniocentesis. In my case, it was offered because I had previously had Karen, my daughter with Down Syndrome.

Some people asked if I was brave or stupid. I told them that I was just well-informed after researching both amniocentesis and CVS.

I knew that both procedures carry a risk of miscarriage and that I would never abort a child because of a disability. I also knew that such procedures can only test for some of the thousands of known “birth defects” and I personally met families who were erroneously told that their child had a defect but were born healthy.

After that, I was remarkably worry-free during my last pregnancy and delivered a healthy girl.

But maternity care has changed a lot since 1985, especially since the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) now states that Abortion is Healthcare Abortion is Healthcare | ACOG

But despite the possible inaccuracies of prenatal test, there is help if a baby is diagnosed with an unexpected condition like Down Syndrome or Trisomy 13.

Thankfully, there are even programs like Perinatal Hospice & Palliative Care: Continuing Your Pregnancy that can help in the event of a prenatal diagnosis that indicates a baby may die before or after birth.

Where there is love, there is always hope!