‘Death by Referral’

Bill Gardner is a child psychologist living in Ottawa, Ontario.  He recently received a diagnosis of untreatable cancer.  Gardner reacted with surprise and disappointment when his doctor recommended “medical assistance in dying,” as it’s euphemistically known in Canada.  Are there no better options for dealing with illness and the depression that often accompanies it?  He offers a powerful first-person account of the Canadian medical system in which the provinces “will face hard fiscal choices, and the health-care system will be drawn toward what’s efficient. Care systems that deliver integrated oncological, palliative, and mental health care are challenging to establish and expensive to run. MAID is inexpensive, completely effective, and easily delivered. If we do not resist it, the system will, as if pulled by gravity, increasingly provide suicide and euthanasia instead of healing for the poor, elderly, and severely ill.”

Read more: Comment.org