Category: Assisted suicide

958 days without medical assistance in dying policy

Lack of government regulation leaves Nova Scotians without access to legal practice and beset by misinformation.

The Coast

Brooklyn Connolly

It’s been 958 days since Bill C-14 passed federal legislation, yet Nova Scotia still lacks a program for medical assistance in dying—MAiD—as well as MAiD policy and regulation.

Without policy, physicians and nurse practitioners have no way of governing MAiD, creating a series of loopholes and lack of general knowledge surrounding the subject. The Nova Scotia Health Authority, meanwhile, has published false information on its website and staff at St. Martha’s hospital in Antigonish still refuse to perform the assistance at all.

Dalhousie professor Jocelyn Downie has been investigating the legal aspects of this for quite some time, and held an open lecture last week in Halifax to present her information. . . [Full text]

Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?

The Guardian

Christopher de Bellaigue

Last year a Dutch doctor called Bert Keizer was summoned to the house of a man dying of lung cancer, in order to end his life. . . . Keizer is one of around 60 physicians on the books of the Levenseindekliniek, or End of Life Clinic, which matches doctors willing to perform euthanasia with patients seeking an end to their lives, and which was responsible for the euthanasia of some 750 people in 2017. . . [Full text]

Mobile euthanasia service to launch for terminally ill patients

Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital says it will deliver lethal drugs to patients across Victoria

AusDoc.PLUS

Euthanasia drugs will be delivered directly to patients using a mobile delivery service when Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying scheme starts later this year.

The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, which has been given sole responsibility for importing, storing, preparing and dispensing the medications, says it will deliver the drugs to patients living in rural Victoria or who are too sick to travel to pick up the drugs themselves. . . [Full text]

Few doctors willing to offer life-ending drugs as Hawaii’s assisted suicide law begins

KOAT Action News

Hawaii’s new medically-assisted suicide law has gone into effect, but few doctors and pharmacies are willing to prescribe and dispense the life-ending medications.

Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions and hospitalized patients will not be able to take the lethal drugs on their campuses, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday. . . [Full text]

Ban on assisted dying at St. Martha’s hospital should end, says law prof

Religious hospital in Antigonish, N.S., has agreement with province allowing it to forego MAID provision

CBC News

Frances Willick

Nova Scotia’s only Catholic hospital is at risk of being found in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation by refusing to provide medical assistance in dying, a Halifax law professor says.

St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish, N.S., is a publicly funded health-care facility. But due to its religious ties, staff are not permitted to provide MAID. . . [Full text]