How you could miss out on life-saving treatment if the law on assisted dying changes

Jul 26, 2024

from Our Duty of Care:

Powerful PROPAGANDA has made the Falconer Bill the threat that it is.

The public and politicians are being misled into believing that the only way they and their families can avoid an “undignified” death is by killing themselves at the end, or having someone do it for them.

(This, of course, is FALSE. Good quality palliative care provision open to all makes assisted suicide legislation unnecessary.)

The same happened in Canada… but now people there are regretting it.

For a growing number of vulnerable Canadian citizens, what began as a right-to-die has become a duty-to-die.

Palliative care is now harder to obtain according to bioethicist Professor Jaro Kotalik, co-editor of the first major review into Canada’s MAID law which was published in May:

He believes that reduced access to palliative care is leaving some patients feeling that MAID is their ONLY option as “their suffering has been inadequately addressed or because they perceive that their families or social supports would carry an excessive burden”.

Not only that…

Medical treatment for life-threatening conditions is also proving more difficult to obtain since the advent of MAID in 2016. Prof Kotalik says:

"I’m concerned about the possibility of people choosing MAID without the full or correct diagnosis, especially in cancer when oncologists are not involved.

“Options for a cancer patient should not be assessed just by a general practitioner or nurse practitioner so I worry patients are not fully informed about alternative options with different treatments and more comfortable outcomes.”

“MAID has become a way to compensate for lack of resources and reduce healthcare costs,” he said.

A report published by the Canadian Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) in 2020 determined that the implementation of MAID would result in a $86.9 MILLION NET REDUCTION in annual healthcare spending in Canada.

But this estimate was based on an annual MAID death rate of just 2.2% of all Canadian deaths. Since then, the MAID death rate has increased to 4.1% in 2022 (and inflation has risen sharply too).

• We can estimate, therefore, that the annual cost savings by 2024 could be at least DOUBLE that – at around $170 Million – offering an even stronger incentive for budget-conscious administrators to implement and expand MAID.

The PBO estimate was also based on the assumption that MAiD patients had only TWO weeks left to live which is likely to be a gross underestimate in most cases.

So, in fact, the savings are likely to have been much HIGHER than estimated both because of the increasing death rate from MAiD and because people would otherwise have lived for many months or even years.

Worryingly, in Britain, some have argued for an assisted suicide law on the grounds that it would save the NHS money.

• This is against a background of a Commons Health Committee report warning that UK hospice care is currently seriously under-resourced.

Like many Canadians, Allison Ducluzeau was not opposed to Canada’s MAID law when it was introduced in 2016.

Indeed, she says she welcomed MAID and was happy with the decision of her late father who had prostate cancer to avail himself of it.

Then in 2023, she was diagnosed with an advanced form of aggressive abdominal cancer—stage 4 peritoneal carcinomatosis.

After being told that she may only have two months to live, her cancer was inoperable and that chemotherapy would be ineffective, Allison’s family discovered that treatment was available across the border in the United States and raised the $200k needed to fund it.

Today Allison is in remission.  

Yet, as journalist Ian Birrell has pointed out, Canada’s healthcare system is superior to Britain’s when it comes to cancer treatment.

"Studies indicate that Canada’s cancer care and survival rates are BETTER than the UK, where waiting lists rose every year over the past decade.

"The NHS target for starting treatment after diagnosis is 62 days.

"But even this dismal target is missed for more than one-third of patients, despite there being evidence that each month of delay reduces the survival chances by about 10%.

“One study earlier this year into why British survival rates have fallen behind countries such as Canada found the average wait in Scotland for chemotherapy was 65 days — and 81 days for radiotherapy in Wales.”

If Canada shows us anything it’s that once the assisted suicide/euthanasia genie is out of the bottle, life-saving healthcare provision we once took for granted may suddenly be stripped away.

Like Allison Ducluzeau, journalist Ian Birrell (an atheist) says he has “no qualms over the ethics of assisted dying” – yet he has "huge concerns over its realities."

It’s those nagging doubts over the practical realities associated with medically assisted killing – not least the inability to access vital medical treatments – that are giving Ian and other journalists (and politicians) who share his belief system reason to pause and reconsider the wisdom of changing the law in Britain.

The tide may be about to change

In recent months, a number of prominent public figures have indicated that they harbour deep concerns about assisted suicide:

Among them are:

• Alice Thomson, associate editor, weekly columnist at the Times
• Sonia Sodha, chief leader writer at the Observer, Guardian/Observercolumnist
• Paul Carroll, author, and former Dignitas member who describes himself as a “non-religious liberal”
• Vicky Foxcroft, who was Labour’s Shadow Minister for Disabilities
• Nicola Sturgeon, former Scottish First Minister

See further  https://ourdutyofcare.org.uk/