Supporters say the practice saves people from unbearable suffering, but critics say it offers the state an easy way to shrug off its duty to care for vulnerable citizens.
RIO – Reserve soldier and Paralympic athlete, the Canadian Christine Gautier, 52, has been asking for wheelchair access ramps to be installed in his home for five years. Since she did not get the benefit, but she persisted in her request, the Department of Veterans Affairs suggested that she apply for the law of the assisted suicide, “because I was so desperate.” Since the standard was issued in 2016, more than 30,000 people have done the same in 2016 Canada: they committed suicide with medical assistance, under the protection of the law. In 2021, more than 3% of deaths in the country were of this type.
The law governing the suicide assisted in Canada is considered one of the most comprehensive in the world. In most countries that have legalized the practice, it is only authorized for the terminally ill. Already in Canadian territory, since March of last year, it extends to people with disabilities or suffering from severe pain.
This year, also in March, the law is expected to be further expanded to include people with problems such as depression. Furthermore, the possibility that the law reaches non-emancipated minors deemed mature enough to choose the health treatment they want to undergo is already under discussion.
“We’re following up on the investigation and changing protocols to ensure what seems obvious to all of us: It’s not up to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is supposed to be supporting people who enlisted to serve their country, to provide medical care in the face of death,” said the country’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “This is unacceptable.”
suicide due to poverty
Christine’s case is not common, but neither is it unique.
Canadian retiree Les Landry, 65, has obtained permission from at least one doctor (two are needed) to resort to assisted suicide because he fears becoming homeless.
Landry is a paraplegic and suffers from diabetes, which authorizes him to make the request, but admits that poverty was the main factor in the decision to end his life. He went so far as to say that he “didn’t want to die”, but he didn’t have the economic conditions to live in dignity with his retirement money.
The cases of Landry and Christine have gained space in the Canadian and international media and have opened a new discussion on the limits of euthanasia. Shouldn’t the Canadian government be helping the two to live with dignity instead of helping them die? Wouldn’t the ever-increasing reach of the law ultimately encourage suicide? And another: Do people suffering from mental disorders have the discernment to make such a decision?
Proponents of the legislation say the law is saving seriously ill people from intense suffering and excruciating pain. Last year, award-winning French director Jean Luc Godard, 91, resorted to the procedure in Switzerland, one of the most popular places for this type of practice.
Critics, on the other hand, argue that the excessive liberalization of legislation devalues the meaningful life experiences of people with disabilities and offers the state an easy way to shirk its obligations towards the most vulnerable citizens.
“I do not want to generalize or minimize the problem, but these situations correspond exactly to what the magisterium of the Church has always feared in relation to pro-euthanasia legislation: to create precedents in which situations that could be worked on in another way cease to exist, because euthanasia appears to be the simplest solution”, says the coordinator of the Nucleus of Faith and Culture of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), biologist and sociologist Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto.
Judge Diaulas Costa Ribeiro, of the Federal District Court of Justice, specialist in medical bioethics and member of the End of Life Commission of the Federal Council of Medicine (FCM)think different.
“These extreme cases are occasional and occur in other places as well,” he says. “The problem is hypocrisy. We must remember misthanasia, which is the death of miserable people, every day, for lack of everything, including medical assistance. We know that we starve and do nothing”.
The lawyer Luciana Dadalto, one of the country’s leading experts on the subject, presents a third way of looking at the question. “Canada has a more elastic understanding of the right to a dignified death, which is not limited to a terminal illness,” says she, author of the book living will.
“The problem is the recent news of the assisted dying offer, which completely removes the logic of defending euthanasia and assisted suicide. The rationale is that it is a choice, not an offer by doctors to people with disabilities a street situation. There is a very fine line between assisted dying and a situation where it is cheaper for the state to facilitate people’s deaths than to care for them. This is the big bottleneck in Canada today,” he says.
Since 2016, suicides have been between 1,000 and 10,000 a year
Since the legislation took effect in Canada in 2016, the annual number of deaths from assisted suicide rose from 1,018 in the first year to 10,064 in 2021, which accounted for 3.3% of all deaths in the country in the year previous one. The numbers come from a report released by the government itself. In these six years of validity of the legislation, 31,664 people died with medical assistance. The number exceeds that of 30,281 deaths from covid-19 in Canada, in 2020 and 2021.
Despite the cases that have made headlines and reopened the debate on the limits of assisted suicide, the report shows that the majority of people (65.6%) who resorted to the practice in 2021 had cancer. Another 18.7% suffered from cardiovascular disease, as well as chronic respiratory disease (12.0%) and neurological disease (12.7%).
Only 2.2% of people who died with medical care that year did not have terminal illnesses. Even so, 45.7% suffered from serious neurological disease.
In Brazil, assisted suicide practices, as well as euthanasia (understand the difference between the practices on the next page) are considered crimes, which adds to the moral condemnation promoted by religious towards the practice. Euthanasia (when a doctor administers a lethal drug to a patient) is considered simple murder. Assisted suicide (when the patient himself takes the drug indicated to die) is a crime against life, described in art.
Assisted suicide is legal in multiple countries, such as HollandBelgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain and Colombia, as well as some states in the WE. In general, it can only be requested in the case of terminal or incurable diseases that generate unbearable suffering for the patient.
“The question is more cultural than legal, so the problem will not be solved by changing the legislation,” says Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto. “The underlying problem is that we don’t know how to live with our death or that of our loved ones, due to living in a society that has acquired a series of powers in relation to well-being, but not the wisdom to relate to these powers. We don’t have the resilience to work wisely with the situation. Given this, some regulations will create one type of problem and some different problems.”
Euthanasia
The word comes from the Greek and means “good death”. Euthanasia consists in the application of a lethal dose of a drug by a doctor who is monitoring the treatment of a terminally ill patient, with no prospect of improvement.
assisted suicide
In assisted dying it is the patient himself who takes the lethal medicine. It is also more often used by terminally ill patients, suffering from incurable diseases.
orthothanasia
In this case, it’s not about hastening death. But don’t put it off either. Practice indicates that, in terminal cases, with no cure prognosis, useless therapeutic efforts should not be applied.
distanasia
The practice is also called therapeutic obstinacy. When there is no prognosis of cure for the patient, but even so, his life is artificially prolonged with devices and drugs.
+The best content in your email for free. Choose your favorite Terra newsletter. Click here!
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
