A Canadian doctor who’s personally euthanized more than 400 people said she helped kill a man who was previously deemed unsuitable for assisted suicide. Ellen Wiebe, a doctor who works with Dying With Dignity Canada, boasted in a seminar for physicians working in assisted suicide about the time she treated a patient who did not qualify for the end of life service.
A Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) assessor had rejected the unnamed man because he did not have a serious illness or ‘the capacity to make informed decisions about his own personal health.’ But the man eventually made his way to Wiebe, who cleared him, flew him out to Vancouver, and euthanized him, The New Atlantic reports.
‘It’s the most rewarding work we’ve ever done,’ Wiebe said of MAID during a 2020 event in a video that’s since been shared online. Obstetrician Stefanie Green, a colleague of Wiebe, also revealed that she’s helped 300 people die in Canada’s controversial MAID program, which eclipses similar programs in the US.
She uses the term ‘deliveries’ to describe both her work helping women give birth – and people end their lives. In 2021, only 486 people died using California’s assisted suicide program, but that same year in Canada, 10,064 died used MAID to die that year. MAID has now grown so popular that Canada has both anti-suicide hotlines to try and stop people killing themselves, as well as pro-suicide hotlines for people wanting to end their lives.
MAID has fallen into further scrutiny over claims that people are now seeking assisted suicide due to poverty and homelessness or mental anguish, as opposed to the traditional method of the terminally-ill seeking a painless death. Among the new type of patients was Rosina Kamis, 41, who said she needed to be ‘euthanized ASAP.’
According to an analysis of Kamis’ medical history and messages sent to doctors and family reviewed by The New Atlantic, the 41-year-old was facing eviction, needed to crowdfund to pay for food, and was afraid that she would ‘suffer alone.’
She also feared being institutionalized, and saw MAID as ‘the best solution for all.’ Although Kamis suffered from chronic leukemia and other health problems, her condition was not terminal, The New Atlantic reported, and a letter seemingly made for her attorney painted a different picture as to why she sought euthanasia.
‘Please keep all this secret while I am still alive because… the suffering I experience is mental suffering, not physical,’ she wrote. Kamis was approved for MAID and chose to die on September 26, 2021, the date of her ex-husband’s birthday. She passed away in her basement apartment after a doctor gave her a lethal injection. (SOURCE)
