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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> as some of the Canadian experience has demonstrated

I live in Canada, and I keep hearing this kind of stuff brought up by Americans.

What, exactly, is "the Canadian experience"?

It would be best if your sources are not American media outlets intended for American audiences they are looking to manipulate.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

My Mum died slowly from lung cancer over almost three years. It spread to basically every organ in her body, she was taking so much chemo they eventually said they had to stop or the chemo would kill her before the cancer would. The intense pain, humiliation and knowing it was a certain death sentence hung over her every single minute of every single day.

My family would have given anything to have been allowed access to assisted suicide by the end.

And I guarantee you would too.

Anyone that says otherwise simply hasn't lived it.

Yeah dying sucks. Too many people have this delusion that their death will happen peacefully in their sleep. There is no guarantee whatsoever. Good chance it will be awful. If needed, I want to have the option for myself to get over with it swiftly.

I saw both my grandmothers waste away waste away with Alzheimer's, and one of the worst parts was seeing the effect on my grandfather's. One of them spent a decade mostly sitting in a chair next to his wife who no longer spoke or recognized anyone...

I am very sorry for your loss.

> And I guarantee you would too

Please don't presume.

Having just buried my mother last year after caring for her as the cancer literally ate her bones away ... no, I did not and I still would not choose suicide over waiting for the end.

I feel like that's hardly a solid rebuttal. The "Handling of specific cases" has 10 cases, a few of which I would struggle to tie to assisted dying.

During the year with the most event (2022), 5 events occured for over 13 000 patients that chose assisted dying. That's 1 for every 2600 person and these events are basically just people suggesting MAiD improperly.

I am British and Canadian.

Some of the famous incidents: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wh...

The Canadian “care” industry is also a dumpster fire: https://globalnews.ca/news/4870784/gilles-duceppes-mother-fo...

> That prompted MacAulay to order an internal investigation, which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker.

Rogue employees suggesting bad treatment doesn't seem too much a cause for concern so long as they're caught before it goes further.

After all, people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman exist prior to this ruling.

By Americans? Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"? Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID? Even the CBC has a few yearly articles about someone getting euthanized because they wanted to die because they were too poor and similar.

I mean, we live in a country where the ruling party has 30% of the vote, and 35% when they had a majority in parliament. So why pretend that disagreements with Canadian policy is somehow just coming from Americans not understanding our wonderful country? It's super weird and it's oddly common on places like here and Reddit.

>Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"?

Because we live here, it's not as big a deal as right-wing ideologues would like you to believe, and it's usually American religious conservatives (or Canadian wannabe-Americans) doing the hand-wringing and the clutching at pearls.

>Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID?

Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?

It's easy for you to say it's not a big deal when you're not the one getting killed by the government.

Your choice of words implies it's the government murdering it's citizens. These people have requested it from a medical doctor.

I said killed, not murdered. It is killing plain and simple, and if we cannot face up to that fact as a society then we are surely not ready to make the decision.

You keep conveniently skipping over the fact that these people are requesting it. Two different physicians need to give their assent before MAID can proceed.

You are being dishonest. I'm not going to engage with you further.

Requesting what? To be killed. Sorry if this is hard to admit but that's just it. I'm not trying to be inflammatory or edgy, just the plain definition of words is such that to actively cause someone to stop living is signified by the word "killing".

Let me guess, you’re American, right?

I'm Dutch. In case it matters, my opinion of our own relatively progressive euthanasia/end of life care system is quite positive.

Yes, they are asking for it. But ignoring the context around it is extremely disingenuous. When you request to die because of lack of adequate care (due to our shitty health system), it is very different than requesting it because of incurable, unbearable pain. You are also ignoring the incentives that it cause, and already handwaived the cases where it was shown that staff was suggesting MAID when it shouldn't have.

I do want to be killed if I want to.

I'm Canadian. So who's we? And yes the point is that there is a debate. Constantly bringing up the American boogeyman in online debates implies that there isn't any actual debate in Canada, and that's it's only controversial outside of the country

>Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?

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