Paul Tuns:
Professor Christopher Lyon published a study titled “Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying System can Enable Healthcare Serial Killing” in HEC Forum – HEC stands for HealthCare Ethics Committee — concluding that Canada’s euthanasia law enables serial killers within the health care system.
Lyon, who teaches at the University of York in the United Kingdom and whose 77-year-old father was killed by euthanasia in a Victoria, B.C. hospital in 2021 over the family’s objections, assessed Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) regime for “its ability to protect patients from criminal healthcare serial killing (HSK) to evaluate the strength of its safeguards.” Lyon concluded “clinicians involved in HSK typically target patients with the same clinical features as MAiD-eligible patients” and “they may draw on similar rationales,” such as “to end perceived patient suffering and provide pleasure for the clinician.” He said that HSKs differ from most other serial killers because they tend to be custodial and are more likely motivated by delusions of “mercy-hero” than sadism.
Lyon said that clinician power to independently define MAiD eligibility and carry out the euthanasia death practically invites abuse of that power.
Lyon observed, “While some patients may be legally eligible for MAiD by meeting the Criminal Code eligibility criteria, their assessors and providers can still have non-clinical or extra-legal motivations to participate, such as sadism, financial gain, misapplied altruism, or ideology.”
Lyon said that healthcare serial killing “can remain undetected or unconfirmed for considerable periods owing to a lack of staff background checks, poor surveillance and oversight, and a failure by authorities to act on concerns from colleagues, patients, or witnesses.” He found that legal euthanasia “added opportunities” for doctors and nurses to kill patients, “afforded by clinicians’ exemption from criminal culpability for homicide and assisted suicide offences amid broad patient eligibility criteria.”
Canadian long-term care nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer murdered eight nursing home residents and tried to kill others and was “only caught through her confession.” She killed them with undetectable insulin injections, she claimed, because she was angry, frustrated with her life, and felt “euphoric” in killing those in her care.
Lyon said that MAiD prosecutions for clinicians are unlikely because of inconsistent reporting and little oversight of the legal killing of patients. He noted that there have been no charges laid on doctors for carrying out euthanasia on patients who do not qualify for the lethal procedure. He notes that in Ontario, doctors who fail to adhere to the 90-day Track 2 assessments period for non-terminally ill patients, get a “notice email” for their first three offenses. He observed, “Ontario MAiD providers seem to be able to unlawfully kill at least three people before serious oversight interventions are considered.”
Canada is especially susceptible to abuses of the euthanasia law because “Unlike other MAiD jurisdictions, Canada uniquely lacks an oversight system to independently review MAiD requests, consistent post-death reporting, and a waiting period between approval and death.”
After examining the sordid history of several physicians who have broken rules regarding the application of euthanasia who have not been charged, Lyon wondered “whether it would be possible to recognize criminal HSK in the current system if it tolerates, creates, or draws such personalities amid legal ambiguity and inconsistent guidance and practices.”
He also found that attempts to have MAiD cases reviewed for possible breaches of the law face bureaucratic hurdles, including the privacy rights of patients.
Lyon concluded that “a radical restructuring of its oversight and delivery can help mitigate the possibility of abuses in a system mandated to accommodate homicidal clinicians.” Lyon advised that there be “clear guidance for police, prosecution, and judicial services to recognize offenses in MAiD law,” noting that the law is currently “ambiguous, with many exemptions for clinicians that may make it difficult to lay charges or prosecute apparent offences.” He also called for greater vetting and monitoring of MAiD assessors and providers, advising there be a searchable national database because many healthcare serial killers are able to evade public scrutiny of their “chequered employment history.”
Lyon told the National Post that he is not saying that criminally culpable homicides are occurring under cover of Canada’s euthanasia regime, but rather that it creates the optimal conditions for it. In his report, Canada’s euthanasia regime, Lyons concludes legal MAiD provides “added opportunities for killing” and exemptions from prosecution for health care workers that create an environment in which health care serial killers can operate and literally get away with murder.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said, “While provocative, this paper is limited to critically assessing the MAiD system as an opportunity structure for culpable HSK to highlight gaps in the current safeguards, that Canada’s MAiD regime may serve as a protectorate that allows serially homicidal personalities to ‘safely’ or legally kill.”