Darrell Castle talks about euthanasia as practiced primarily by doctors in Canada but which is being made legal in more and more countries around the world.

Transcription / Notes:

EUTHANASIA A GROWING PHENOMENON

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday, the 13th day of January in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about euthanasia as practiced primarily by doctors in Canada but which is being made legal in more and more countries around the world. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize what it called “Death with Dignity”, but Canada now seems to be the world leader in allowing doctors to legally kill their patients.

There are two types of euthanasia, assisted suicide, or mercy killing depending on what you choose to call the practice, active and passive.  The passive kind is where care that could possibly prolong life is withheld allowing the person to die. That practice is legal everywhere but is nevertheless subject to stringent legal guidelines. Not many would argue with or find fault with a close relative who chose to allow medical staff to withhold treatment for a loved one who had no hope of recovery. Doctors and nurses must have responsible permission or a last will which permits the withholding of such treatment before they can do so.

Active euthanasia, on the other hand, is a completely different situation. That is where a doctor, sworn by oath to the profession of healing, deliberately causes the death of a patient and in many countries it is now perfectly legal. Active euthanasia is currently legal in the nations of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Spain. Although technically illegal in many other countries the legal system simply looks away when physicians kill or assist patients in dying.

Today, I want to start by focusing my attention on our friends in Canada and examine how they are handling the subject of mercy killing. Legally, Canada allows euthanasia for adults who have a terminal illness that has made their death “reasonably foreseeable.” That wording has drawn some criticism because it excludes some who are not terminally ill, but the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that it could also apply to those with non-terminal, but grievous and incurable conditions. We will be able to see from some information in this report that the practice has been stretched or extended to just about anybody a physician chooses to kill or assist in dying.

I’m always interested in what our friends to the north are doing because they often show us a picture of what is coming here legally as we abandon our own faith in God as our Canadian neighbors have. I first came across this information from a report in The New Atlantic about two Canadian doctors who brag that they have killed more than 700 people combined. Doctor Ellen Wiebe who works with Dying With Dignity Canada, conducts seminars for other Canadian physicians who may have the desire to kill their patients. I know I’m being unkind because the good doctor would say that she only “assists” her patients with dying.

Dr. Wiebe says that she has euthanized more than 400 people and that is the most rewarding work she has ever done. It seems that she has been denied the joy of the medical profession known as saving lives, healing, making lives better and such other things. Perhaps she read a biography of Joseph Mengele when she was in medical school and took her inspiration from it, but nevertheless she finds killing “most rewarding.”

Another Canadian physician who works with Dr. Wiebe, Doctor Stefanie Green says quite proudly that she has killed more than 300. These doctors also seem quite proud of the fact that they occasionally kill people who have applied to be killed and have been rejected by the MAID or Medical Assistance in Dying gatekeeper. It makes no difference to doctors Wiebe and Green, they seem to answer to no one.