Disturbing story of Quebec man's poor medical care leading to Medically Assisted Suicide

 

Sin is progressive! Once you open a door to evil, even though it seems good, things will just get worse and worse. Canada's MAiD, Medical Assistance in Death policy is an example. Off to a cautious and almost reasonable start when first introduced by woke elites, it has taken steps every year to make it more accessible to more people. Now they want people to be able to decide well in advance of meeting the requirements. 

In this case, a man's poor medical care left him in so much agony, he chose to end his life in order to end the pain.

Quadriplegic man’s MAID death from bedsore 

results in public inquiry being ordered

By Kalina Laframboise  Global News

Posted June 25, 2024 9:28 am

 Updated June 25, 2024 3:38 pm

 2 min read

Quebec’s chief coroner has ordered a public inquiry into the medically assisted death of a quadriplegic man after he developed a severe bedsore during a hospital stay.

The decision announced Tuesday comes after Quebec’s public security minister demanded an investigation into Normand Meunier’s death.

The 66-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in Saint-Jérôme, just north of Montreal, last January. He was being treated for a respiratory illness.

During his hospital stay, Meunier developed a major pressure sore on his buttocks. Moelle épinière et motricité Québec, a group that advocates for people with spinal cord injuries and improved mobility, said the sore exposed muscle around Meunier’s tailbone.

In late March, he received medical assistance in dying to put an end to his suffering.

“It was not his choice. He asked for medical assisted to death as a result of no choice and lack of care,” said Ariane Gauthier-Tremblay, a social worker with the advocacy group.

“We want to make it very clear.”

Meunier’s death sent shock waves through Quebec, with members of opposition parties describing Meunier’s death as a “true shame” for the province.

An internal investigation was launched by the local public health authority that oversees the hospital, but calls grew for a separate, independent probe. Health Minister Christian Dubé has also announced an investigation into Meunier’s death.

Meunier’s wife told Radio-Canada she had said to hospital staff that Meunier needed a special mattress to avoid bedsores, but that he spent four days on an emergency room stretcher without one.

Sylvie Brosseau spoke publicly about her husband’s death in May, saying she would continue to fight and that she didn’t want Meunier to have died “in vain.”

“There are other people who are very unwell in hospitals at the moment,” Brosseau said at the time, adding they must receive proper care.

Quebec Coroner Dave Kimpton will oversee the inquiry, which will include public hearings from interested parties.

The inquiry will look into the circumstances surrounding Meunier’s case and make recommendations as to prevent similar deaths. The dates have not yet been set.

The decision to hold a public inquiry comes as a relief for both Meunier’s family and Moelle épinière et motricité Québec. Gauthier-Tremblay hopes it will help prevent similar situations.

“We want physically disabled people to be confident when they go to the hospital and we want them to have specific care that respects their spinal cord injuries. We want them to be safe and healed when they go to the hospital,” Gauthier-Tremblay said.

The regional health authority in charge of the hospital confirmed its own investigation is ongoing and it will cooperate with the coroner’s inquiry.

— with files from Global’s Felicia Parrillo and The Canadian Press

DEA Targeting of Addiction Treatment Kratom will Protect Big Pharma Profits

Is DEA in the pockets of big pharma?

If not, please explain the reason for this.

Kratom is used in head shop products including tea. © head_shop_hippie / Instagram

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), currently starring in the new season of the Netflix series “Narcos,” is busy trying to class a relatively innocuous alternative treatment to methadone, kratom, as “Schedule I,” putting it on par with heroin, cocaine, and the most "dangerous" of them all – cannabis.

Citing questionable claims about its potential to cause fatal overdoses, the DEA hopes to list the natural opioid starting October 1, but a petition against the change has more than 110,000 signatures and counting, and points to studies that claim “it has been shown numerous times in reports from users to help recovering Opiate addicts, treat pain, combat depression and anxiety, and much more.”

In Alabama, where Kratom is already banned, addicts had to return to methadone with heroin use and overdoses reported to have increased by nearly 20 percent.

Unlike synthetic methadone, kratom is a natural substance which does little to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies who cannot patent it.

Well we can't have that, can we? Big pharma will not sit quietly by as they lose a small portion of the drug trade they mostly control with legal opioids. This makes the debate over the legalization of pot a real farce. Big pharma has already done an end-around and legalized hard drugs. They will soon be putting Mexican drug cartels out of business. OK, I'm being a little facetious, but it's a measure of the low regard with which I hold big pharma.

Made from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a Southeast Asian tree related to coffee, kratom activates opioid receptors in the brain and reduces pain, serving as a mild stimulant.

Its legality has attracted the attention of head shops, using it in products including energy shots and tea.

The DEA isn’t looking upon kratom with the same fondness though, announcing its intent to ban it in order to “avoid an imminent hazard to public safety.”

Kratom will sit alongside heroin, LSD, and ecstasy as having “a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision,” according to the DEA.

Because the petition surpassed 100,000 signatures, the White House will have to respond to it, but this is not expected to happen before kratom is newly classified at the end of this month.

It will then remain Schedule I for two years allowing the government to settle on a more permanent classification.

According to the DEA, there were 15 deaths in the US related to kratom between 2014 and 2016.

The Huffington Post reported that of the 30 deaths worldwide, other drugs and pre-existing health conditions also played a factor in several cases.

More than 25,000 fatal overdoses occurred in the US in 2014 using prescription drugs, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

That's it then; Kratom is not killing enough people for Big Pharma. 15 deaths in two years, that's only 0.03% of prescription drug deaths in America, and that's not counting non-prescription drug deaths. If the 20% increase in drug deaths in Alabama were applied to all of America, that would mean about 5000 deaths per year (again, just from prescription drugs) caused by the removal of Kratom from use. But at least 7.5 people will still be alive that might not be otherwise. 

Do the numbers DEA! Your job is to protect Americans not Big Pharma profits! If this reclassification goes through, I'm going to be screaming for an inquiry as to why.

Melanie's Miracles

The number of miracles that have happened around our adopted daughter, Melanie, would blow the minds of most people. 

For the first couple of months of 2016 Melanie complained of headaches. After three visits to doctors and no diagnosis, she was finally taken to Emergency where she was sent to have a CT scan. The scan revealed that the shunt implanted in Melanie's head had stopped working.

Melanie has spina bifida - is paralyzed below T2; she has hydrocephalus and required several attempts to get a working shunt implanted after being born. She died on the operating table more than once, and she contracted meningitis as a result of one of the surgeries. The meningitis robbed her of much of the use of her right arm and hand; it also left her such that she would never function beyond the level of a 5 or 6 year old. Mel also has food allergies which can be fatal.

Now, with that history the thought of having shunt replacement surgery was not something we looked forward to. But Mel was hospitalized in some considerable pain that was just increasing almost hourly. Abbotsford Regional Hospital does not do shunt surgeries, so she was put on a list to go to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C. She would have the surgery there.

A day went by, two days, 3, 4. On the 4th day Mel was in so much pain she was crying way harder than I had ever heard her cry in the 27 years I have been listening to her cry. My wife, Pat, was beside herself. She was texting several members of our family while controlling her anger at the delay in Mel being moved to RCH, and the apparent inability of the nurses to get Mel sufficient medication to control the pain.

I know people were praying for her, nevertheless, I asked the family members who were chatting with us to pray, to really pray. Within minutes Pat was informed Mel would be transferred that day, and they soon got her medicated sufficiently to endure the pain of the spinal fluid filling up her head.

Mel was transferred that evening and had great fun in the 45 minute ambulance trip with a medic who had met some of the top stars in country music. Mel is a country music nut - loves Faith Hill, Shania, etc.

It was the next afternoon before she got another CT scan at RCH. The following morning the neurologist informed Pat that that CT scan was greatly improved over the one taken in Abbotsford. "Shunts don't normally fix themselves" he said, but that is what appeared to be happening.  Pat responded that we were used to things like that happening around Melanie.

They decided to keep her in RCH for observation over the next several days. Mel had been prone to panic attacks while in the hospital in Abbotsford and the first couple days in RCH, and then they just stopped. 

A few days later, another CT scan showed little improvement over the previous, but by then, we had reduced Melanie's medication to almost zero and she was in a great mood. Pat was beginning to wonder why they were there. 

A few more days go by, another CT scan showed significant improvement. In fact, it looked completely normal. We expected that would be the case because Mel was acting completely normally and was pretty much off all medication. So given that she felt well and the shunt somehow fixed itself, Mel was released from hospital having completely avoided shunt replacement surgery. 

That everything began to happen almost immediately after several of us prayed is by no means a coincidence. God listens to intercessors, and He has always looked after Melanie, often in absolutely amazing ways. But you will have to wait for my book to read about them.

Why didn't God completely heal Melanie from all her handicaps? God made her perfect the way she is. The extraordinary effect she has had on hundreds of lives would never have been possible without her special needs.  God has glorified Himself through her much, much more than through most people.

We all have handicaps of some sort, some more visible than others. But Melanie, and those of us who believe Jesus is God will live without handicaps in Eternity in the Presence of Jesus Christ - He Who is risen. Blessed be His Name.

Euthanasia Comes to Canada Next Year, Maybe

People with grievous and irremediable medical conditions should have the right to ask a doctor to help them die, Canada's highest court says in a unanimous ruling.

Supreme Court of Canada - Feb. 6, 2015

The Supreme Court of Canada says a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help people end their own lives should be amended to allow doctors to help in specific situations.

The ruling only applies to competent adults with enduring, intolerable suffering who clearly consent to ending their lives.

The court has given federal and provincial governments 12 months to craft legislation to respond to the ruling; the ban on doctor-assisted suicide stands until then. If the government doesn't write a new law, the court's exemption for physicians will stand.

Justice Minister Peter MacKay released a short statement acknowledging the ruling covers "a sensitive issue for many Canadians, with deeply held beliefs on both sides."

"We will study the decision and ensure all perspectives on this difficult issue are heard," the minister said in the statement.

The case was brought by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association on behalf of two women, Kay Carter and Gloria Taylor, both of whom have died since the legal battle began. Both women had degenerative diseases and wanted the right to have a doctor help them die.

A lawyer on behalf of Carter and Taylor argued that they were being discriminated against because their physical disabilities didn't allow them to kill themselves the way able-bodied people could.

Carter went to Switzerland with her daughter, Lee, to die. Taylor died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2012.

The ruling is not limited to those with a physical disability who require a physician's assistance to end their lives.

All nine justices share the writing credit on the ruling, an unusual action meant to signal particular institutional weight behind the decision.

'Impinges' on security of the person

The one-year delay in implementing the ruling means the ban on doctors assisting in suicides remains in place until then.

Lee Carter and her husband Hollis Johnson react to the court ruling

Lee Carter and her husband, Hollis Johnson, said Kay Carter died happy, with a smile on her face because she died the way she wanted.

Asked about a woman with a physical disability who said she now feels pressure to end her life, Carter said she was sorry to hear that because the woman "has so much to live for."

"I want everybody in this country to live the life as they want to. But for those that ... don't want to continue, that have an incurable illness, [I'm glad] that they have a choice."

The court awarded full costs to the BCCLA and the other appellants, including Kay Carter's family. The Canadian government bears most of the cost and British Columbia, the province where the process started, bears 10 per cent of the trial costs, plus whatever else it cost the province to appear at the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

The costs were awarded because the case was of such national importance.

In weighing the argument that the prohibition on doctor-assisted death breached the two women's rights, the court found the Charter right to life doesn't require an absolute prohibition on assistance in dying.

"This would create a 'duty to live,' rather than a 'right to life,' and would call into question the legality of any consent to the withdrawal or refusal of lifesaving or life-sustaining treatment," the court wrote in the decision.

​"An individual's choice about the end of her life is entitled to respect."

Doctors not forced to help

The court also found an individual's response to "a grievous and irremediable medical condition" is a matter critical to their dignity and autonomy. The law already allows palliative sedation, refusing artificial nutrition and hydration and refusing life-sustaining medical equipment.

"And, by leaving people ... to endure intolerable suffering, it impinges on their security of the person," the court wrote. Seriously? I'll need that explained to me.

Doctors, however, are by no means compelled to help patients end their lives. The court leaves that up to the professional colleges that regulate medicine.

The court agreed with the B.C. trial judge that doctors are capable of assessing the competence of patients to consent, and found there is no evidence that the elderly or people with disabilities are vulnerable to accessing doctor-assisted dying.

The Supreme Court also agreed with the lower court that the safeguards work where they've been set up in jurisdictions that allow physician-assisted suicide.

While the ruling sets out specific criteria, it leaves some questions.

The decision is silent, for example, on whether depression or mental illness counts as a medical condition. The court does include psychological pain under the criteria of enduring and intolerable suffering.

Conservative MP Steven Fletcher, who became a quadriplegic after an accident in 1996, was at the court to react early to Friday's decision.

Dying With Dignity Supporters
rally outside the Supreme Court

He has already introduced a private member's bill — which was also introduced in the Senate before Christmas — to make physician-assisted death legal under Canadian laws.

"That bill could be used as a foundation for parliamentarians going forward," he told reporters, although it's not scheduled to come up for debate any time soon and he concedes "those decisions are made at a higher pay grade than mine."

"I guess it depends ... if people want this to be an election issue or not," he said. "If it went to a free vote in Parliament, it would pass."

"There does need to be some Criminal Code provision, I think, to prevent abuse," he says. "I don't want people, because they have a bad hair day, to get their car mechanic to take them down."

"The vast majority of Canadians — 84 per cent — support physician-assisted death with appropriate caveats."

It's easy enough to have empathy for those terminally ill people who are suffering greatly, that's why a majority of Canadians support this. There are a few problems with it however:

1. Those 'appropriate caveats' will likely get whittled away over time once we become accustomed to euthanasia - the 'slippery slope' principle.

2. Doctors already 'assist' people dying by withholding medication that would delay the shutting down of bodily organs. Nevertheless, for doctors to now administer poison or an overdose of some medication to end someone's life is a big step. It turns the Hippocratic oath into the hippocritic oath.

3. As a Christian, I know the God has appointed the number of days we shall live. Consequently, for us to take matters into our own hands and commit suicide is to thumb our nose at the Lordship of Jesus Christ, not a good idea when we are about to head into judgment.