Opinion
Could be a long day tonight — Cam needs coffee
From the Brownstone Institute
Way back in the B.C. era (Before Covid), I taught Medical Humanities and Bioethics at an American medical school. One of my older colleagues – I’ll call him Dr. Quinlan – was a prominent member of the faculty and a nationally recognized proponent of physician-assisted suicide.
Dr. Quinlan was a very nice man. He was soft-spoken, friendly, and intelligent. He had originally become involved in the subject of physician-assisted suicide by accident, while trying to help a patient near the end of her life who was suffering terribly.
That particular clinical case, which Dr. Quinlan wrote up and published in a major medical journal, launched a second career of sorts for him, as he became a leading figure in the physician-assisted suicide movement. In fact, he was lead plaintiff in a challenge of New York’s then-prohibition against physician-assisted suicide.
The case eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which added to his fame. As it happened, SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against him, definitively establishing that there is no “right to die” enshrined in the Constitution, and affirming that the state has a compelling interest to protect the vulnerable.
SCOTUS’s unanimous decision against Dr. Quinlan meant that his side had somehow pulled off the impressive feat of uniting Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and all points in between against their cause. (I never quite saw how that added to his luster, but such is the Academy.)
At any rate, I once had a conversation with Dr. Quinlan about physician-assisted suicide. I told him that I opposed it ever becoming legal. I recall he calmly, pleasantly asked me why I felt that way.
First, I acknowledged that his formative case must have been very tough, and allowed that maybe, just maybe, he had done right in that exceptionally difficult situation. But as the legal saying goes, hard cases make bad law.
Second, as a clinical physician, I felt strongly that no patient should ever see their doctor and have to wonder if he was coming to help keep them alive or to kill them.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, there’s this thing called the slippery slope.
As I recall, he replied that he couldn’t imagine the slippery slope becoming a problem in a matter so profound as causing a patient’s death.
Well, maybe not with you personally, Dr. Quinlan, I thought. I said no more.
But having done my residency at a major liver transplant center in Boston, I had had more than enough experience with the rather slapdash ethics of the organ transplantation world. The opaque shuffling of patients up and down the transplant list, the endless and rather macabre scrounging for donors, and the nebulous, vaguely sinister concept of brain death had all unsettled me.
Prior to residency, I had attended medical school in Canada. In those days, the McGill University Faculty of Medicine was still almost Victorian in its ways: an old-school, stiff-upper-lip, Workaholics-Anonymous-chapter-house sort of place. The ethic was hard work, personal accountability for mistakes, and above all primum non nocere – first, do no harm.
Fast forward to today’s soft-core totalitarian state of Canada, the land of debanking and convicting peaceful protesters, persecuting honest physicians for speaking obvious truth, fining people $25,000 for hiking on their own property, and spitefully seeking to slaughter harmless animals precisely because they may hold unique medical and scientific value.
To all those offenses against liberty, morality, and basic decency, we must add Canada’s aggressive policy of legalizing, and, in fact, encouraging industrial-scale physician-assisted suicide. Under Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAiD) program, which has been in place only since 2016, physician-assisted suicide now accounts for a terrifying 4.7 percent of all deaths in Canada.
MAiD will be permitted for patients suffering from mental illness in Canada in 2027, putting it on par with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
To its credit, and unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, Canada does not allow minors to access MAiD. Not yet.
However, patients scheduled to be terminated via MAiD in Canada are actively recruited to have their organs harvested. In fact, MAiD accounts for 6 percent of all deceased organ donors in Canada.
In summary, in Canada, in less than 10 years, physician-assisted suicide has gone from illegal to both an epidemic cause of death and a highly successful organ-harvesting source for the organ transplantation industry.
Physician-assisted suicide has not slid down the slippery slope in Canada. It has thrown itself off the face of El Capitan.
And now, at long last, physician-assisted suicide may be coming to New York. It has passed the House and Senate, and just awaits the Governor’s signature. It seems that the 9-0 Supreme Court shellacking back in the day was just a bump in the road. The long march through the institutions, indeed.
For a brief period in Western history, roughly from the introduction of antibiotics until Covid, hospitals ceased to be a place one entered fully expecting to die. It appears that era is coming to an end.
Covid demonstrated that Western allopathic medicine has a dark, sadistic, anti-human side – fueled by 20th-century scientism and 21st-century technocratic globalism – to which it is increasingly turning. Physician-assisted suicide is a growing part of this death cult transformation. It should be fought at every step.
I have not seen Dr. Quinlan in years. I do not know how he might feel about my slippery slope argument today.
I still believe I was correct.
Shawnee chief Tecumseh
It is not too late to change, and think of others in these troubling times
“When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” — Shawnee warrior Tecumseh
Is it TV? Is it the monstrous social media? Is it the pressure to do well, in the modern world?
The pressure to, as the saying goes, have more toys when you die?
Where did it all go wrong? And is it too late to change.
Are we doomed, to be uncaring and selfish?
Will our children find it in their hearts, to help their fellow man?
I remember back in the day, working at the SUN. Slaving like an SOB for a shit salary.
There was a guy who worked on the big camera in the back shop.
It was a gigantic camera that took pictures of every page we sent out. That resulted in a negative, which was then made into a plate, that went onto the press.
Simple, right?
One day, Ben came around to show the folks in the newsroom, a piece of paper in his hand. Waving it around in triumph.
It was his boast — a refund cheque from the Canada Revenue Agency, for more than $20,000. He was showing it off. Bragging.
Rubbing it, in our faces.
He had some kind of illegal immigrant scam going, I suspect. Something to do with a business. I don’t know, and I don’t wanna know.
Anyway, I waited for him, like a spider in a web.
Just waiting for him to come to me, which he did.
He laughed as he showed by the government refund cheque. And, indeed, it was more than 20K.
I said, “Ben, that is impressive … it is … but you would impress me more, if you gave that to a charity.”
His face froze. The smile was still there, but he had nothing to say, and moved on.
I was hoping to leave him with a strong impression. An impression of shame.
Because I thought what he was doing was pure bullshit.
If you are getting that kind of money from the CRA, you’re best to shut the fuck up about it. Not show it around your office, and brag about it.
And I bloody well meant what I said. Because I know people who make big money, and never say a word to anyone.
I even know one guy on the province’s Sunshine List, who made so much money, he had to buy a big house to impress his co-workers.
His small bungalow, where they lived and raised their children, had proved an embarrassment! LOL!
He was PO’d, but he had no choice. They had to buy a mansion in the country.
All paid for, by the Alberta government, by the way. Your tax dollars at work.
Fast forward to last week.
Sitting on a bench, outside the Co-op liquor, it was nice and sunny, so I decided to light up a cigar. A cheap Cubano, which I smoke occasionally.
A young couple struggled with their child, who was screaming his head off. He didn’t want to leave a children’s place called Cloud Land.
But the cloud had turned nasty. I waved at the Dad, yelling, “Don’t worry, it gets better.” He smiled, and waved back, while the wife scowled at me.
It was clear, they were in over their heads, and didn’t know what to do.
Two ladies approached me. Middle aged but youngish, and dressed conservatively.
One lady stopped, said, “Can I buy you a bottle?”
I laughed, and said “No, I’m fine.”
They thought I was a homeless person, LOL!
I hadn’t shaved, and my hair was long. And yeah, I probably did look pretty rough.
I got up and we walked into the liquor store, and we chatted a bit.
She and her friend, were First Nations! She was going to Las Vegas for the first time, and was excited about it.
And then we parted ways.
But man, that just blew me away. There are good folks in this town, my friends.
But they are real people, not the big oilpatch execs, driving Aston Martins, Ferraris and Porsches to work and back.
Those days, of giving back to the community, are long over. Long, long over.
Yes, the movers and shakers go to fancy charity dinners, and virtue signal that they are doing the right thing.
But really and truly, they don’t give a shit.
You won’t see these folks down at the Blues Can, watching Tom Phillips and the DT’s, performing the best country in Western Canada.
Or volunteering to an animal rescue group, to helping save wild animals and nurse them back to life.
Other than Mikael Backlund and his wife Frida, have you seen another Calgary Flame give anything back to the community? And I don’t mean events they are forced to go to, I mean on their own.
Same with Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl. And the same with former Winnipeg Jets’ player Teemu Selanne.
And why oh why, is it often a European player, who comes to the fore. Reaching out to the community, and giving back.
My friend, the Bullitt … has a theory about that.
And I should say, I duly respect the Bullitt, because he has forgotten more about Canadian sports, than I know.
He told me, Dave, “I know the reason why. It’s because since birth, the European kids have not been told they are the greatest thing on the planet every day.”
That quote, stopped me in my tracks. Hitting me in the face, like a Monty Python slap with a cold fish.
Dear God, he was right. The average entry level NHL contract is $900K US. That has to change a person.
It’s just like Keith Richard wrote in his memoir, Life.
If you have somebody telling you (like Mick Jagger) how great you are, every goddam day. Eventually you start to believe it.
In Moscow, Keith said roadies would say hi to Mick, and he would just keep on walking, not even acknowledging their existence.
Sorry to say, that is Mick Jagger. A super talented, but arrogant arse.
Meanwhile, big burly roadies came to Keith, in tears, begging him to adopt a dog that had befriended them. A mangy Russian dog, who had no future.
Keith adopted the doggie, and brought it home to Connecticut, where it has lived a happy life.
At this point, my old faithful editor, Dave Naylor would say, “Maje, where are you going with this column?’
Well Dave, I don’t know, because I don’t have any answers.
But look, if you do see a homeless person, toss them a fiver, a tenner, or a twenty. Even the change in your console.
We can’t save the world, my friends, but maybe, just maybe, we can save one person.
Pay it forward, in the Tim Horton’s drive-thru. Buy a coffee for the person behind you.
Buy a couple food packs at the grocery store, for the donation box. They’re only $10 bucks each for crissakes.
I recently donated a whole whack of Ukrainian food to the Mustard Seed — a package of perogies, cabbage rolls and kolbassa, worth $95.
For no effing reason, other than, Thanksgiving was approaching. They phoned and said thanks.
That was good enough for me.
Maybe, it’s just time for us to shut off the world, and be human again.
Perhaps we can seek wisdom, from the First Nations.
“May the stars carry your sadness away, May the flowers fill your heart with beauty, May hope forever wipe away your tears, And, above all, may silence make you strong.”
— Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation
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