Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS)
Public opinion &
a novel publicity campaign

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Many polls have been taken. However, the results vary according to the precise question
asked. Recent results show support for euthanasia choice at:
 | USA:
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 | Canada:
 | Gallup Canada in 1968 found 45% support
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 | A Gallup Canada poll in 1995 showed 76% support
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A Forum Poll poll in 2015 showed 76% support
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 | 80% in the UK
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 | 81% in Australia
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 | 92% in the Netherlands 1 |
Ballot measures have been voted upon in three states of the United States. They showed
support at:
 | 46% in Washington (1991).
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 | 46% in California (1992).
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 | Oregon poll:
 | 51% in 1994; |
 | 60% in 1997. |
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A novel approach to promoting physician assisted suicide:
Andy McKay and Andy Manson are partners at the Cundari Group, a
Canadian advertising agency, in Toronto, ON. Both had parents and friends
who died lingering and painful deaths. Manson's father's died 12 years ago of "a
nasty bone cancer. He was a pretty tough character, but he was in so much pain
it was awful." He had signed a living will that specified no extraordinary
measures were to be taken to resuscitate him. McKay said: "We've both seen
cases where passive euthanasia is the right thing to do."
2 By "passive euthanasia" he apparently means "physician assisted
suicide."
Putting their publicity experience to use, they created a design for a
sticker that resembles a memorial plaque, suitable for attaching to a
park bench, etc. The stickers "commemorate" three fictional people –- Donald J.
McLeod, Rosa Maria Allende and Kathleen (Kay) Mandell, -- and include the URL of
McKay's and Manson's website
dignityindeath.com.
A photograph of one of the stickers appears in the Toronto Star article.
2 It says:
"To the glory of Kay Mandell, who at age 37 was stricken by Lou Gehrig's
disease that caused her muscles to waste away, one by one, until her throat
[became] paralysed and she choked to death while fully conscious.
www.dignityindeath.com."
Another sicker discusses Donald McLeod, another fictional character, who spent six years in a coma while
courts debated his fate. The third refers to a non-existent Rosa Allende who was kept alive for
four years, costing the health care system hundreds of thousands of dollars that
"could have helped find a cure for the very disease she suffered from."
Ruth von Fuchs, president of the Right to Die Society of Canada,
3 said:
"I found (the stickers) touching – not so much slices of life, but slices
of death. I just saw the anger and the grief and the determination that some
people are feeling around this issue. More and more people are seeing their
parents or their siblings have a death that they don't want for themselves."
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of Canada's Euthanasia Prevention
Coalition (EPC), 4 is
reported as agreeing that the stickers "... are very compelling" but calls
their website "misleading and inaccurate. ... No one wants to see people
suffering in the way they describe." He feels that the DignityInDeath site is using confusing terminology.
That website seems to confuse two very different behaviors:
 | What it calls "voluntary euthanasia" (VE). They apparently define
this as being able to request that a doctor withhold extraordinary treatment
so that the disease will take its course and the patient will die sooner. This
is legal in Canada now and is often practiced. The site strongly recommends
that people prepare a living will in order to define what end-of-life
procedures be used by their physicians.
|
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Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS). This involves allowing doctors to
prescribe a fatal dose of medication to some terminally ill patients.
This is currently illegal in Canada and a change in the law to permit it has been debated in the Senate yearly without any change to the law.
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The confusion is further complicated by the Wikipedia website. They have an essay on VE that considers it a synonym for
physician assisted suicide (PAS). 5
Because terms like "euthanasia, "voluntary euthanasia" (VE), active
euthanasia, passive euthanasia, etc. have so many definitions, we recommend
that they be avoided wherever possible. The word "euthanasia" now covers a wide
range of activities ranging from an individual taking their own life without any
assistance from family, friend, or physician, to fictional roaming death squads
periodically going to nursing homes and deciding who is going to be murdered
without their consent.
The current debate in U.S. states and Canada is whether physicians should be
allowed to prescribe a fatal dose of medication that their patient would consume
later at home. This is often called "physician assisted suicide" or "PAS." We
strongly recommend that this term be adopted by everyone advocating, writing, or
talking about this topic.

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The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above
essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
- Christopher Reed, "Oregon Tackles Mercy Killing", Globe and Mail,
Toronto ON, 1997-JUN-27, P. A12.
- Susan Pigg, "Giving dignity to `bad deaths.' Park bench stickers could get
folks talking about euthanasia, and the need for living wills," The Toronto
Star, 2009-DEC-23, at:
http://www.thestar.com/
- Right to Die Society of Canada's website is at: http://www.righttodie.ca/
- The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition's website is at:
http://www.euthanasiaprevention.on.ca/
- "Voluntary euthanasia," Wikipedia, as updated on 2009-DEC-17 at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/
- Megan Brenan, "Americans' Strong Support for Euthanasia Persists," Gallup, 2018-MAY-31, at: https://news.gallup.com/
- Ben Spurr, "77% of Canadians support assisted suicide, poll shows," Toronto Star, 2015-AUG-28 at: https://www.thestar.com/


Copyright © 1997 to 2020 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: on 2020-OCT-30
Author: B.A. Robinson

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