Article By Frank Bergman
Two leading Canadian psychiatrists who helped implement their country’s “assisted suicide” system are now sounding the alarm, warning that the government is now killing patients who should never receive approval to be euthanized.
The psychiatrists, Dr. Gary Rodin and Dr. Madeline Li, delivered the warning in a New York Times opinion article this week, describing a system that has expanded far beyond a last-resort option.
Their concerns strike at the heart of assurances that Canada’s euthanasia regime is carefully controlled.
The warning comes from physicians who support assisted dying, have assessed patients for eligibility, and helped establish the procedures at one of Canada’s largest medical centers.
Now, those same doctors say the system is approving inappropriate cases and failing to give patients opportunities to reconsider before they’re killed with state-backed lethal injections.
Doctors Who Built the System Warn of Dangerous Failures
Rodin and Li are not outside critics of assisted dying.
Both have counseled patients and assessed their eligibility. One has administered the drugs used to end patients’ lives.
Together, they helped design an institutional framework for responding to assisted-death requests.
Their firsthand involvement makes their warning particularly stark.
“But Canada’s system for assisted death is no longer an option of last resort,” Rodin and Li wrote.
“Too many people are receiving the procedure without the opportunity for careful reflection about it with a health provider.
“In some cases, patients are being approved who should not be,” the psychiatrists wrote.
“Reports have emerged of people seeking assisted death in the context of poverty or loneliness, raising concerns that they may feel they have no other options.”
Even among cancer patients, Rodin and Li warned that “there’s a risk of rushing into it and shortening what can be a meaningful period in patients’ lives.”
Their account describes failures with irreversible consequences: people approved for death when they should not be, and others pursuing it while struggling with poverty, loneliness, or the belief that no alternative remains.
Assisted Death Now Accounts for 5% of Canadian Deaths
Rodin and Li described Canada’s system as “one of the most permissive in the world, allowing assisted dying for almost any form of subjectively intolerable suffering that has a medical basis, or even for medically unexplained physical symptoms.”
Assisted dying now accounts for approximately 5% of the country’s annual deaths.
The psychiatrists argued that assisted-suicide activists have largely driven policy, and said other medical professionals share their concerns.
Their warning challenges the portrayal of disturbing cases as isolated exceptions.
The problems they identify concern eligibility, access to counseling, and whether patients are being given meaningful alternatives before approval to end their lives.
Those are central safeguards, and the doctors’ account says they are failing some patients.
Woman Approved to Die After Losing Ability to Cook
One case described by Rodin and Li exposes the stakes.
A woman in her 70s had loved preparing large Sunday dinners for her family.
When she could no longer cook, she felt she had lost her value to them.
She sought assisted dying and received approval.
Counseling then helped her understand that her family valued her presence, rather than her ability to prepare meals.
“She sought and received approval for assisted dying after she lost the ability to cook,” Rodin and Li wrote.
“She felt she had lost her value to her family.
“Through counseling, she came to understand that her family valued who she was, not what she did for them.
“She decided not to go through with ending her life, at least for now.
“That Christmas, her family gathered and she sat proudly at the table, while others did the cooking and serving.”
The woman had already been approved to end her life.
After counseling, she chose to remain with the family she had feared she no longer mattered to.
That Christmas, she was alive to sit at their table.
An Alarm From Inside the Euthanasia System
The case illustrates exactly why the psychiatrists are demanding careful reflection and support before assisted death proceeds.
A patient’s conviction that she had lost her worth changed when someone helped her understand how her family actually saw her.
Yet approval to die had come first.
Rodin and Li’s warning leaves Canada’s euthanasia defenders confronting criticism from doctors who helped put the system into practice.
These physicians support assisted dying.
They have participated in it.
And they are now warning that the system is approving people who should not be approved, with death as the consequence when those failures are not caught in time.
Be the first to comment