Scott Yung Ho Kim

Fourteen of the world’s 195 countries currently permit some form of euthanasia or assisted suicide, usually involving medical professionals, i.e., medically assisted death (MAD). A subset of these ...

I. Assisted death (euthanasia and/or assisted suicide, EAS) regimes take a variety of forms. The US states that permit EAS limit the practice to persons with a terminal illness, and Australian stat...

This chapter examines whether euthanasia and assisted suicide for psychiatric disorders (pEAS) should be legalized. While proponents often rely on parity arguments, claiming that psychiatric suffering should be treated the same as physical suffering in jurisdictions that permit assisted dying, we argue that such conceptual ethical reasoning is insufficient to justify legalization. Legalization requires careful policy analysis that considers empirical evidence, implementation challenges, and broader societal consequences. Using Canada’s planned expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for mental illness as a case study, and drawing on developments in Belgium and the Netherlands, we analyze concerns related to the scale of pEAS, the difficulty of reliably assessing irremediability and decision-making capacity, the risk of premature and preventable deaths, and the impact on vulnerable populations. We further examine effects on stigma, suicide prevention, mental health care, and the integrity of medicine. We conclude that the current evidence does not support the claim that pEAS can be implemented safely and reliably, and that its legalization risks serious long-term harms for individuals, mental health care systems, and society. Therefore, pEAS should not be legalized.

Following the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada in 2016, the expansion of eligibility criteria in 2021 permits MAID for both individuals whose death is reasonably foresee...

Canada's rapid rise in deaths from euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, termed Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in the country, now ranks it second only to the Netherlands in terms of MAiD deaths as percentage of overall deaths, with one province already hosting the highest rate of all jurisdictions in the world. Analyzing Health Canada's annual MAID reports, which show that up to 336 out of 1837 providers are likely responsible for the majority of MAID deaths in a given year, we discuss how the rapid increase likely reflects not a broad Canadian consensus but the capture of a policy-making and implementation process by a small group of activists and clinicians colonizing medicine to become an ideologically driven vehicle for expanding MAID access and delivery. As a remedy and to reprioritize patient safety and protection against premature death, a more transparent, relevant, and safeguarded compliance regime based on evidence-based, multi-perspective policy-making is needed.