So what could go wrong with Canada’s euthanasia program, somewhat euphemistically called Medical Assistance in Dying or MAID? Well everything that could go wrong with this program, has gone wrong, from the increasing sphere of those “eligible” for the program to the latest wrinkle: a preponderance of organs coming from Canada to potentially transplant into American patients.
What comes to mind when you think about the maximum amount of love a parent can have for their child?
For me, I think of Dick Hoyt pushing his son Rick, who had cerebral palsy, in a wheelchair through the Ironman World Championship course. I think of the parents of Nick Vujicic, born without arms or legs, raising Nick with confidence, and cheering him on as he became an international motivational speaker. I think of the mother of a child with Down Syndrome, choosing each day to recognize the absolute gift of their child. I think of the parent at the dinner table comforting a child upset by a ‘C’ on their report card.
BERKELEY, Calif.—Tsvi Benson-Tilsen, a mathematician, spent seven years researching how to keep an advanced form of artificial intelligence from destroying humanity before he concluded that stopping it wasn’t possible—at least anytime soon.
Now, he’s turned his considerable brainpower to promoting cutting-edge technology to create smarter humans who will be up to the task of saving us all.
“My intuition is it’s one of our best hopes,” said Benson-Tilsen, co-founder of the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit supporting the new field.
This isn’t science fiction. It is Silicon Valley, where interest in breeding smarter babies is peaking.
Even the UN has described Canada’s assisted suicide program as ‘state-sponsored eugenics’ and called upon the government to curtail plans to expand euthanasia access.
In Canada, we kill the disabled. Over 90 percent of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are aborted; pre-born children diagnosed with other disabilities usually meet the same fate. But for decades, our Nazi-style lethal ableism was limited to those not yet born.
With the expansion of euthanasia eligibility to those suffering solely from disability or mental illness scheduled to come into effect in 2027, that is slated to change. Disability groups have been nearly unanimous in their condemnation of this plan, which has been delayed twice by the Liberal government due to pushback from across Canadian society – but not cancelled entirely.
Who decides what humans become?
Visionaries, dreamers, and autocrats have long dreamt of reshaping humanity to their preferred model. In the last century, eugenics was enthusiastically embraced among Anglo-Saxon elites, then by Communist Russia as a means of creating a hyper-selfless Homo Sovieticus, and, most infamously, Nazi Germany’s drive to create a “master race” via racial-hygiene laws and the extermination of people with disabilities and other “lives unworthy of life.”
Tech bros love designer babies
In the “not-so-distant future” of the 1997 sci-fi thriller Gattaca, society is divided by genetic status. The protagonist, played by Ethan Hawke, is a naturally conceived “invalid”, while Jude Law plays a former swimming champion whose life was engineered for perfection. Law’s traits had been selected by a geneticist, his fate inscribed in his cells. He was “never meant to be one step down on the podium” — so when he wins silver instead of gold at the Olympics, he throws himself in front of a car. In a society that promises perfection, the psychological cost of failure is high.
Should we welcome a new kind of commercial product that will allow some people to have healthier, happier and cleverer children?
Here follows a non-exhaustive list of my genetic flaws. I am short-sighted, more so as I age. I have bunions, dodgy knees and even dodgier shoulders. I have asthma. My skin blisters easily. My hair started going gray when I was in my late teens. I have zero talent for foreign languages, running or music. I am prone to nightmares, as well as to depression and anxiety.
Canada has delayed the extension of its assisted suicide program to people suffering solely from mental illness, health officials announced Monday.
Canada offers medically assisted death to terminally and chronically ill people, but the plan to extend the program to people with mental illnesses has divided Canadians, the New York Times reported. Some critics attribute the problem to a lack of adequate psychiatric care in the country.
The controversial policy would allow anyone in Canada with an incurable medical condition to apply for assisted suicide, even if the disease is not terminal, which makes the law one of the most liberal assisted suicide programs in the world.
Don’t for a minute think Trudeau’s government will stop at voluntary euthanasia.
GOLDSTEIN: The controversial beliefs of Canada’s ‘Famous Five’ suffragettes
With the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada assessing Tommy Douglas’ “controversial beliefs and behaviours” in light of his early support of the racist science of eugenics, we should definitely take a look at Canada’s ‘Famous Five’ suffragettes as well.
Campaigners have slammed as ‘reckless’ and ‘horrible’ a plan by a Canadian parliamentary committee to expand the country’s assisted-suicide program to terminally sick children.
They told DailyMail.com that sick and disabled kids could soon be joining the roughly 10,000 adults who end their lives each year by state-sanctioned euthanasia in the world’s most permissive such program.
The president of the Quebec College of Physicians wants to explore the prospect of euthanizing suffering babies and believes it’s nobody’s business but doctors’.
To be fair, Dr. Mauril Gaudreault would let parents have a say as well, so he’s not being totally arrogant.
Gaudreault’s rather obscene suggestion illustrates just how far down the slippery slope we have plunged when it comes to mercy killing, euthanasia, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) , call it what you will.
Everything new is Nazi again!
One woman’s case shows how Canada’s euthanasia laws tend towards suicide on demand.
In March of 2021, the Canadian Parliament passed the world’s most liberal euthanasia law. The law scrapped the previous requirement that a person’s death be foreseeable. No longer would assisted suicide hurry death along. Now, it would prescribe death to people with decades left to live so long as their disease was deemed “grievous and irremediable.”
Millions of Canadians now qualify to receive what the government terms “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID, Dr. John Maher, a psychiatrist in Ontario, told The American Spectator. Any serious health problem can be enough to justify it. And starting in 2023, Canadians will also be able to receive MAID because of mental illnesses.
People in the U.K. with learning disabilities have been told they will not receive resuscitation if they contract COVID-19, according to learning disability charity Mencap.
