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52-year-old grandfather the latest Canadian to choose euthanasia while waiting for cancer treatment

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Dan Quayle’s wife believes that she could still have her husband today if he’d gotten the treatment he needed. In fact, wait times for cancer patients in Canada who are literally dying while waiting for treatment keep getting worse.

On October 7, 2023, Dan Quayle – a British Columbian, not the former vice president of the United States – turned 52. He was hoping to be told that he could begin chemotherapy after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It was not to be. “After 10 weeks in hospital, Quayle, a gregarious grandfather who put on his best silly act for his two grandkids, was in so much pain, unable to eat or walk, he opted for a medically assisted death on Nov. 24,” the National Post reported. “This was despite assurances from doctors that chemotherapy had the potential to prolong his life by a year.” 

Throughout the agonizing wait, his family “prayed he would change his mind or get an 11th-hour call that chemo had been scheduled,” but were instead told consistently by the hospital that they were “backlogged.” The family is speaking out now “following the stories of two Vancouver Island women who went public with their decisions to seek treatment in the U.S. to avoid delays in B.C.” – and Dan’s wife believes that she could still have her husband today if he’d gotten the treatment he needed. In fact, wait times for cancer patients who are literally dying while waiting for treatment keep getting worse. 

When Dan Quayle died by lethal injection, he still hadn’t been given a timeline for when he might get chemotherapy. It reminds me of the posthumously published obituary written by a Winnipeg woman who chose to die by assisted suicide after being refused the treatments she needed: “I could have had more time if I had more help.”  

Indeed, one of the reasons Quayle felt that a lethal injection was his only option is because he didn’t have the financial resources to get help that was available elsewhere – but as a price. “If we had more money, we could have gone to the States,” his wife told the National Post sadly. “But we’re just regular people.”   

She is likely referring to the two Vancouver Island women who decided to go public with their own experiences with the BC health care system. Global News published one story with the headline “B.C. woman gets surgery in U.S., says wait times at home could have cost her life” about Allison Ducluzeau, who paid $200,000 for surgery in the United States after she was told by a BC oncologist that she was not a candidate for the treatment that saved her life. After successfully getting treatment in the U.S., she recently got married – and is appalled by how she was treated in BC. In fact, she wasn’t offered life-saving treatment – but she was offered assisted suicide.  

“There’s a lot of promises I’m hearing,” she told Global News. “But, you know, we need boots-on-the-ground action right now. What can you do to shorten these wait times? How can you prioritize cases so that people with aggressive stage four cancer get seen by someone and when they do get seen, they get offered treatment and not MAID like I was the first time?” 

Another woman, 43-year-old Kristin Logan of Campbell River, was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer – but faced a three or four month wait for treatment in British Columbia. She went to Washington State for chemotherapy, instead – she could afford it because the treatment was covered due to her dual citizenship and veteran status. When the health minister responded to her case by saying that the system “doesn’t always get it right,” she responded with fury: “To suggest that the system merely ‘doesn’t always get it right’ is a gross understatement, bordering on denial. Our healthcare system isn’t tripping over minor hurdles; it’s plummeting off a cliff. We’re not dealing with ‘occasional misses’; we’re grappling with a chronically diseased system where inefficiency and neglect have become the norm.” 

What does this mean? It means that people are dying on waitlists – and while they suffer, often horribly, they are offered assisted suicide when they are their most vulnerable. And if the Trudeau Liberals get their way, in March of next year the floodgates will open and assisted suicide will also be available to those suffering with mental illness. Waitlists for mental health assistance and psychiatric care are even longer – I know people who have waited for years merely for an appointment. Many Canadians simply do not have access to this care. And so not only will Canadians die on waitlists; many will be offered assisted suicide while they are on waitlists, and many will, out of desperation, say yes.  

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

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UK pediatrician who led review of child ‘transitions’ says US medical groups ‘misleading the public’

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Dr. Hilary Cass, author of the Cass Review

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The typically left-wing New York Times published an interview on Monday with consultant pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass on her comprehensive review of so-called “gender medicine” in the United Kingdom, indicating that awareness of the damage due to surgical and chemical “transitioning” continues to spread despite the best efforts of LGBT activists.

Released in April, 366-page Cass Review was commissioned by National Health Service (NHS) England following ongoing scandals about the practices of British “gender clinics” such as the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. The four-year project consisted of comprehensive reviews of current research and international standards, as well as extensive interviews with gender-confused children and adults, family members, detransitioners, doctors, and activists.

It found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations” and that while such interventions require a great deal of caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of [so-called] gender care for children,” and that “[w]hile a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.” Her findings led NHS to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender confusion earlier this year.

Speaking to the Times, Cass explained that she was planning her retirement when she was first asked to tackle the project and was initially apprehensive about wading into the controversy.

“The most important concern for me is just how poor the evidence base is in this area,” she said. “Some people have questioned, ‘Did we set a higher bar for this group of young people?’ We absolutely didn’t. The real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of pediatric practice.”

The Times acknowledged that her “findings are in line with several European countries that have limited the treatments [sic] after scientific reviews. But in America, where nearly two dozen states have banned the care outright, medical groups have endorsed the treatments as evidence-based and necessary,” including groups the paper contacted for its latest story. Cass described American medical consensus as “out of date” on the issue.

“When I was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, we did some great work with the A.A.P. [American Academy of Pediatrics],” she elaborated. “They are an organization that I have enormous respect for. But I respectfully disagree with them on holding on to a position that is now demonstrated to be out of date by multiple systematic reviews.”

“It wouldn’t be too much of a problem if people were saying ‘This is clinical consensus and we’re not sure,” she added. “But what some organizations are doing is doubling down on saying the evidence is good. And I think that’s where you’re misleading the public. You need to be honest about the strength of the evidence and say what you’re going to do to improve it.”

significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them.

Yet while mounting evidence against youth “gender transitions” is prompting European nations such as the United Kingdom and France, which are normally to the left of America, to move away from the practice, in America, the medical establishment and the Biden administration continues to dig in their heels, despite Biden’s own Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) releasing a since-deleted report last year acknowledging that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults are more likely than straight adults to use substances, experience mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and experience serious thoughts of suicide.”

The White House’s comprehensive pursuit of the transgender agenda has included reopening the military to recruits afflicted with gender dysphoria, promoting gender ideology within the military (including “diversity” and drag events on military bases), holding White House events to “affirm transgender kids,” condemning state laws against underage “transitions” as “close to sinful,” promoting underage “transitions” (potentially at taxpayer expense) as a “best practice,” and trying to force federally funded schools to let males into female athletic competitions and restrooms.

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South Korean president declares low birth rate a ‘national emergency,’ plans new ministry to address it

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From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

President Yoon Suk Yeol announced that he would ask for the parliament’s support to establish a new Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning after the country reached a new low with an average number of babies per woman of 0.72 in 2023.

South Korea’s president has declared the country’s low birth rate a “national emergency” and announced a new government ministry to address the problem.

In a televised press conference on May 9, President Yoon Suk Yeol said, “We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency.”

He announced he would ask for the parliament’s support to establish a new “Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning.”

South Korea has had the lowest fertility rate in the world for years, and the average number of babies per woman dropped to a new low of 0.72 in 2023, down from 0.78 the previous year.

Despite the government’s efforts to increase the birth rate by spending over $200 billion on initiatives meant to encourage larger families, including infertility treatment, cash subsidies, and childcare services, the country’s birth rate declined for the fourth year in a row in 2023.

A Korean Construction corporation made headlines this year for offering employees $75,000 for each baby they have. “If Korea’s birth rate remains low, the country will face extinction,” Lee Joong-keun, chairman of the Booyoung Group, warned.

READ: New ‘Birthgap’ film shows how explosion in childlessness is driving population collapse

According to YouTuber Stephan Park, who grew up in South Korea and runs the YouTube channel Asian Boss, Korean men face the additional problem of being expected to own a house when they marry, which is very difficult under the country’s current economic conditions.

“There are all the societal pressures that if you get married, guys are the ones that are supposed to buy the house, to have the house ready, which is impossible to have if you are a 30-year-old guy … with the average house prices you’ll never be able to afford one in your lifetime,” Park explained.

“So that’s the most common thing we hear: ‘I cannot afford to get married,’” he added.

According to some projections, South Korea’s and multiple other Western and Asian populations are expected to be cut in half by the year 2100 if the current trends continue.

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