The Reuters news agency publishes the story of Lisa Pauley from Canada, who has been suffering from severe anorexia for decades. Pauly recently turned to the MAiD organization in Canada, which provides medical help to dying people, to win them help at the end of her life. Pali, 47 years old, has been suffering from eating disorders since she was 8 years old. “I go whole days without eating solid food, and I’m very weak,” she was quoted as saying by Reuters. “Every day is hell, I’ve already tried everything. I feel like I’ve lived my life and now I just want to end it, I don’t have the strength anymore.”But according to Canadian law, Pauly will have to wait with the request until March 2024, when the criteria in Canada for euthanasia will be expanded, and legally approved for people suffering from mental illness. According to Reuters, Pauli first raised the idea of euthanasia for people with mental illnesses in 2021, and she hopes it can be included in the law after the changes are approved soon. By the way, Pali’s mother, who initially opposed the extreme move, now understands her daughter’s desire: “She simply cannot predict what will happen in 10 or 20 years with this disease. There is no turning back, it will only get worse.”
30 thousand people have already died by euthanasia in Canada
Already in 2016, Canada legalized assisted dying for people with a terminal illness, and since then more than 30,000 people have been assisted in this death. Today Canada is one of the countries that tends to extend assisted euthanasia to the dying population.
In Israel, more and more patients in difficult situations ask not to prolong their lives | Illustration: Sally Farag, shutterstock
Some Canadian medical experts quoted by Reuters believe that mental illness alone should not be a criterion for assisted death. “It is difficult to determine whether a mental illness is truly incurable, as the law requires, and it will be difficult to distinguish between pathological suicidality and a rational desire to die,” said Sonu Guind, chief psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.
In the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, euthanasia is a legal act, and in Israel, as we know, it is not possible. However, the phenomenon of “non-life extension” is becoming more accepted in recent years. A spokesman for one of the largest hospitals in Israel says that “more and more families in Israel are asking not to prolong the lives of their loved ones, since they are in a very extreme medical condition that cannot be improved. Although doctors cannot assist in euthanasia, in practice in some cases they help not to prolong life, In situations where there is no way to save the patient or return him to a normal medical condition.”
