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<\/a>Leaving home to die<\/strong><\/p>\n Globally, there are thousands of suicide-related organizations, both for and against, with valid arguments on both sides.<\/p>\n Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and Switzerland allow different forms of assisted suicide. As well, three US states\u2014Oregon, Washington, and Montana\u2014have recently allowed physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients only.<\/p>\n But in Canada all forms of euthanasia and assisted-suicide remain unlawful, although the law has been challenged in court several times. Under the current Criminal Code, a person who aids or abets suicide can be imprisoned for up to 14 years.<\/p>\n Currently in BC, a Vancouver woman named Gloria Taylor, the BC Civil Liberties Association, and three others are challenging the law preventing assisted suicide. Taylor, 63, suffers from ALS, or Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease, and wants the same rights as people in Holland and other parts of the world.<\/p>\n ALS is a degenerative disease causing muscle waste; eventually all control of voluntary movement is lost. When internal muscles such as the diaphragm fail, patients are unable to breathe on their own. Often sufferers of ALS die from respiratory failure.<\/p>\n Diseases like these are often brought up when right-to-die advocates make their case in court. Degenerative diseases act slowly and are unpredictable. Some people live for years, although they are often unable to walk, eat, or take care of themselves, while the brain stays intact.<\/p>\n In the case of Taylor, she is physically unable to commit suicide on her own, although mentally able to make the decision. Under the current law, she would have to ask a loved one or doctor for assistance, putting them at risk for prosecution.<\/p>\n The three other plaintiffs in the Carter v. Canada case are Victoria doctor William Shoicet and Lee Carter and Hollis Johnson, a married couple who flew Lee\u2019s mother, Kathleen, to die with the help of an assisted-dying group in Switzerland earlier this year.<\/p>\n The couple\u2019s participation in the trip has put them at risk for criminal charges, but they have come forward because they believe these services should be available in Canada. The trip to Switzerland cost over $30,000, and had to be done under a shroud of secrecy. The mother was unable to say goodbye to her friends, and the family couldn\u2019t tell anyone their plan, which they believe was an unnecessary cruelty.<\/p>\n Regulation by prohibition<\/strong><\/p>\n Canadian Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC); a group that believes all forms of euthanasia and assisted-suicide should remain unlawful. EPC was created after the highly referenced Sue Rodriguez case, which drew a lot of attention to the right-to-die movement.<\/p>\n Schadenberg switched his focus from pro-life advocate to the alleged dangers of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide and formed the EPC, which is acting as an intervener in the Carter v. Canada case.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need a law to protect our citizens,\u201d says Schadenberg. \u201cWe need a law sometimes to protect me. For us to have a just and fair society, we can\u2019t have a situation that says, \u2018You have the right to kill me.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n Russel Ogden, co-founder of the Farewell Foundation in Vancouver, got his start researching the assisted suicides of AIDS patients in the early \u201990s, and has been studying self-chosen death ever since. The Farewell Foundation is also acting as an intervener in the Carter vs Canada case. He believes the Swiss approach to assisted suicide does work, and has a place in Canadian society.<\/p>\n In Switzerland, assisted suicide is done outside the healthcare system, with help from assisted dying groups, as well as doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has a combination of upfront safeguards, as well as after-the-fact safeguards for every self-chosen death,\u201d says Ogden. \u201cIn order to receive assistance with dying in Switzerland, a person must undergo a process of eligibility, an assurance that they are not operating under any misapprehension of what their suffering is, that they are making a fully informed request, and that there is no undue influence or coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n Assisted deaths in Switzerland are reported to the coroner, police, and prosecutor, and an immediate investigation follows.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequence of that,\u201d says Ogden, \u201cis it\u2019s unlikely that anybody wishing to act in an unethical manner is going to choose this approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Schadenberg, on the other hand, believes that coercion is impossible to prove, and feels that the Swiss model, too, is flawed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is, in Switzerland we\u2019ve had the whole action of assisted suicide\u2026 change very quickly. It\u2019s not about terminal illness,\u201d he says. \u201cFor instance, now you have assisted suicide for couples. You have one member in a couple who is just an elderly person, and the other one who has a terminal condition, and they\u2019re doing assisted suicide for that. So, you know, as time goes along, people say there isn\u2019t really any abuse. If you allow everything, then I guess there\u2019s nothing that you can do which is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Ogden feels that keeping the conversation about assisted suicide open and transparent leads to safe and responsible practices. Prohibition, on the other hand, just drives it underground.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople still find appropriate medications and plastic bags to die,\u201d says Ogden. \u201cThe prohibition is not stopping people. It doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n Right, wrong, or choice<\/strong><\/p>\n The exact guidelines and protocol around assisted suicide vary between countries and states. In Switzerland, anyone can choose assisted suicide, no illness required, but in Oregon a person must have less than six months to live as diagnosed by a doctor. Ogden maintains that the issue needs to be about choice.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is about choosing the manner, the time, and the location of one\u2019s death,\u201d says Ogden. \u201cAt the moment, most people are dying in the hospital setting, and they don\u2019t get to make a decision about when that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n Often, palliative care patients are receiving so much morphine or other medication for their pain that they aren\u2019t fully conscious at the end of their lives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ability to say goodbye, at the time of your choosing, is enhanced if you\u2019re picking the day that you\u2019re going to die,\u201d says Ogden. \u201cYou can gather the people that you want to say goodbye to, send the postcards, make the phone calls\u2026 If you\u2019re in the typical dying process of most Canadians, you will go very slowly, in a prolonged way, in an institution.\u201d<\/p>\n Ogden points out that neither he nor the Farewell Foundation are opposed to the current situation, but that some people would rather pick their final event with greater precision.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are different ways of organizing one\u2019s dying process,\u201d says Ogden, \u201cand we believe that people should be able to have whichever option they would like.\u201d<\/p>\n End-of-life care<\/strong><\/p>\n The normal procedure when a doctor decides that no more effort should be put into sustaining life is to have palliative care take over. Palliative care can provide relief from pain and other distressing symptoms at the end of life, but is inconsistent throughout Canada.<\/p>\n In fact, there\u2019s evidence to suggest that abuse of sedatives and painkillers is already happening during palliative care, both intentionally and unintentionally.<\/p>\n In his sworn affidavit as a witness for the Attorney General of Canada in the Carter v. Canada case, Dr. Jose Pereira discloses several ways in which palliative sedation is abused today. The abuses range from use of sedation to hasten death, use of sedation in inappropriate circumstances, inadequate patient assessment, and a number of other situations that arise due to clinician or physician fatigue or highly complex cases.<\/p>\n At the palliative care stage, medical staff turns its focus to the patient\u2019s comfort without considering the side effects of, for example, morphine, which can cause respiratory depression or death.<\/p>\n Dr. Will Johnston, a general practitioner in Vancouver and chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of BC, highlights the difference between the use of morphine in palliative care and euthanasia.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had people say, \u2018You will give me a pill if it gets really bad, won\u2019t you?\u2019\u201c he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve been able to honestly assure them that it is considered completely valid and ethical palliative care to give a person as much pain relief as they want, as much sedation as they want, with the eye being on the pain and sedation, not the intent to kill.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnston defends the state of palliative care in Canada, although a recent report released by the Royal Society of Canada, called End-of-Life Decision Making, as well as Pereira\u2019s testimony, reveals the need for extensive improvements.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the moment, palliative care in Canada is not wonderful,\u201d says Udo Schuklenk, chair of the expert panel that researched and co-authored the report.<\/p>\n But even if palliative care was improved across the board, the report points out the need for individuals to have end-of-life options.<\/p>\n \u201cSurely the better the quality of your life is, and the better your palliative care is, the less likely it is that you would request assistance in dying,\u201d says Schuklenk. \u201cHaving said that, for many people there is an existential suffering involved knowing that they have a few months or a year left, and they\u2019re not prepared to wait for that. In the view of the panel members at least, that is a very reasonable response and it should be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n Does decriminalization lead to criminals?<\/strong><\/p>\n Johnston contends that society would be at risk should assisted suicide be legalized.<\/p>\n \u201cThe increment in suffering between, say, Gloria Taylor\u2019s death in my care, using legal, ethical palliative care, and her death her way\u2026 will be small enough that it\u2019s simply not worth the danger to society of changing the law,\u201d says Johnston. \u201cI can see how easily people are improperly influenced, and how the next stop could easily be\u2026 a suicide prescription. The proposal that we could control this stuff is, to me, unrealistic and naive.\u201d<\/p>\n The End-of-Life Decision Making report looked at data from countries where assisted suicide is decriminalized, and conceded that there had been abuse of the system, as Johnston predicts.<\/p>\n To determine whether these abuses were happening only in societies where assisted suicide was legal, the panel also looked at countries where it\u2019s unlawful: Canada, Britain, Germany, and Australia.<\/p>\n What they have found is that involuntary euthanasia is happening in those places as well. According to the report, there doesn\u2019t seem to be any evidence at all that decriminalization leads to more abuse or more involuntary deaths.<\/p>\n \u201cOur suspicion is that abuse is just taking place in any system,\u201d says Schuklenk. \u201cWhat we need to ensure is that the abuse is limited to the maximum possible extent. This is true in both societies where it is criminalized, and societies where it is decriminalized.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a decade ago, Camosun university transfer student Joanna Webber\u2019s uncle decided he wanted to be euthanized. Half of Webber\u2019s family lives in Holland, where assisted suicide is legal. When her uncle, who was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, started considering this end-of-life decision, her entire family was involved and backed him up. \u201cThe whole family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-november-30-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}