By Paul Tuns
Dr. Joel Zivot, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, testified last month before Canada’s Senate committee hearings on Bill C-7, which, if passed, will expand criteria to make euthanasia more permissive. Zivot testified that an assisted death may be tortuous, not peaceful, explaining that death from the pharmaceutical cocktail used in euthanasia in Canada and capital punishment in the United States, is akin to drowning.
Dr. Timothy Holland, a Nova Scotia physician who carries out euthanasia, also testified before the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. He said so-called Medical Aid in Dying is “a relaxing drift into sleep … It is a beautiful and inspiring event.”
Zivot, a Canadian who practices and teaches in the U.S., disagreed, saying that based on his study of the autopsies of American criminals who were executed by lethal injection, an assisted death “could be exceedingly painful and more akin to drowning.” He said in 85 per cent of the bodies he examined, the lungs were twice their normal weight and full of water as a result of using Phenobarbital. He explained, “It means that when a person dies by lethal injection, they basically drown … more akin to death by waterboarding that we recognize to be cruel,” referring to the infamous torture technique used to simulate drowning.
Zivot made the comparison because both the lethal cocktails use a similar drug— Phenobarbital in U.S. executions, Midazolam in Canadian euthanasia deaths. Both drugs slow the brain and nervous system.
Zivot said autopsies are not typically done on patients who have been euthanized, but if they were “Based on my knowledge of pharmacology and familiarity with these drugs,
I wuld suggest that there is a high likelihood that the same things would be found.”
He also said that Propofol, when used to anesthetize a patient for surgery, can cause a burning sensation in the lungs. In Canada, they use higher dosages to anesthetize patients before euthanasia, sometimes ten times higher, to paralyze the patient. Zivot said the use of a paralyzing drug in euthanasia deaths means the patient can’t show distress.
Zivot directly countered Holland’s assertion, saying, “To state that the death that the person feels is peaceful, well, this is unknowable or false … That’s a chemical myth that is put in place. That is a trick of what is actually happening here.” With euthanasia they use drugs to paralyze and sedate the person, making it impossible for the person to show distress as their lungs fill with fluid.
On Feb. 16, Zivot published a paper in Medpage Today recounting his testimony. He wrote, “To be clear, my expertise is relevant to MAiD (Medical Aid in Dying) not because it is considered akin to the execution of prisoners in its essence, but because the pharmaceutical and medical methods used are quite similar.” He noted that he once witnessed an execution that looked peaceful, but when “I reviewed the autopsy of the execution that I had witnessed, [I] found that, although I had seen no outward struggle, the inmate had developed the striking lung congestion I had noted in others.” Zivot noted that when he performed autopsies on executed criminals, he saw the trauma done to the body, “the lungs filled with frothy fluid,” indicative of drowning. He said these autopsies showed such frothing regardless whether Pentobarbital or Midazolam was used to sedate the executed.
Due to his interest in pharmacology, Zivot studied “published MAiD protocols and found an additional striking factor: MAiD includes the use of a drug that paralyzes the body, making it impossible to breathe or to move.” He said, “These drugs do not block the sensation of pain or the awareness of being paralyzed.” He said the use of the paralytic drug has been abandoned in death penalty cases “because of its obvious cruelty,” but remains part of euthanasia protocols in Canada.
In obvious response to Holland’s assertion, Zivot wrote that “the injection of a paralytic after the Propofol will make every death appear outwardly unremarkable — and according to MAiD proponents, even beautiful in its peacefulness.”
Zivot said: “Canadians who choose to die by MAiD must be informed of the real possibility that the death they experience may be very different from that which is described by MAiD advocates.”
He also called for autopsies for everyone who dies of euthanasia to determine if existing protocols produce frothy fluid in the lungs, indicative of drowning; if so, the use of paralytics must be ceased in such deaths.
Zivot concluded: “It is time to accept what the evidence available to date shows: MAiD may very likely provide a torturous death.”
