(NRO) – Euthanasia advocates are so full of it, promising that snuff medicine will only be a last resort when nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering.
It’s never been true, to the point that no law in the world requires that everything — or indeed, perhaps anything — be tried to alleviate suffering prior to taking the lethal measure. The patient can simply refuse alleviating interventions — and that refusal does not legally invalidate the “Make me dead” request even when their suffering could be reduced with proper medical, psychological, or social care.
Suicidal people can even increase their own suffering to qualify for euthanasia; in Canada, by self-starving to become sufficiently weak that death is foreseeable, or, in Oregon, diabetics refusing insulin to immediately become terminal.
Now, a study published in the Journal of Medical Ethics shows that euthanasia in Quebec — euphemistically called “medical aid in dying” (MAiD) — is sometimes applied with little or no attempt to palliate or relieve suffering through non-lethal medical means prior to the killing. CONTINUE