Dear Editor:
Re: Not a private matter, Jan. 5.
In Canada, a democracy, and a relatively free society, my feeling is that people are entitled to believe and say what they think. However, in critical issues, and in cases where opinion, along with long-held and unchallenged views are promoted, absent of relevant facts, then I feel it is my duty to counter them.
And, so it is with a letter to the editor from a Jack Moesker of Fergus. It does not matter whether or not a right is “inalienable.” Medically assisted death has been codified into Canadian law and is accessible to our fellow Canadians, as long as they meet the current criteria.
The metaphor of the speeding car is not applicable either, since the adoption of medical assistance in dying (MAID) and its progression has been incremental and measured. The process is, indeed, private, in the sense that it is nobody else’s business, once a decision is arrived at by the suffering person, their loved ones and the physician.
It is speculation on Moesker’s part that compassionate euthanasia, “endangers the dignity of people with disabilities or dementia.” Saying something doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. In terms of the negative impact on physician providers, there are a number of books in the marketplace written by frontline workers.
MAID is not a slippery slope, as the writer suggests. A few isolated cases in society, most of them the fault of a renegade and uncaring caseworker at Veterans Affairs Canada, are not suggestive or emblematic of a wholesale slaughter of the elderly and infirm, as has been suggested.
Finally, his notion that enhanced palliative care and “disability and elderly support systems” is pleasing to the ear but vague in its enactment. Being drugged to the point of semi-awareness and incomplete engagement is not living.
There is pain that vexes and inconveniences us, and there is pain that possesses, controls and rules us. I have borne the latter, fortunately only for a period of a few months. This time, although relatively brief, was characterized by the ability to sleep for only 15 minutes at a time, before the excruciating pain would awaken me. I could not read more than a few paragraphs of a book, follow the plot of a TV program, find enjoyment in a previously cherished hobby – nothing!
Fortunately, for me, there was a remedy. However, for many others there is none and the spectre of living an indeterminate amount of time in the grip of unceasing and unendurable agony is beyond soul searing.
Allan Berry,
Fergus