XPost: soc.retirement, alt.health.systems, sac.politics   
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   From: jcarter@dont-email.me   
      
   A Canadian family has been left heartbroken and angry after a   
   26-year-old diabetic and blind man died of 'physician-assisted suicide'   
   - three years after they blocked his request for euthanasia.   
      
   Margaret Marsilla had been successfully able to prevent her son Kiano   
   Vafaeian from dying under Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program   
   back in 2022.   
      
   She noted that Vafaeian did not suffer from any terminal illnesses. He   
   was just blind and struggling with complications from type 1 diabetes as   
   well as mental health issues.   
      
   Years later, though, on December 30, 2025, Vafaeian was granted a   
   physician assisted suicide under Canadian law - which states only that   
   patients must show they have an 'intolerable' condition that cannot 'be   
   relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable.'   
      
   'Four years ago, here in Ontario, we were able to stop his euthanasia   
   and get him some help,' Marsilla posted on Facebook in the aftermath.   
      
   'He was alive because people stepped in when he was vulnerable - not   
   capable of making a final, irreversible decision.'   
      
   She went on to call her son's physician-assisted death 'disgusting on   
   every level'.   
      
   'And I promise I will fight tooth and nail for my son and other parents   
   who too have children that suffer from mental illness,' Marsilla wrote.   
   'No parent should ever have to bury their child because a system - and a   
   doctor - chose death over care, help or love.'   
      
   Canada legalized assisted dying in 2016, initially limited to terminally   
   ill adults whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable.   
      
   But eligibility was expanded in 2021 to include people with chronic   
   illness, disability, and soon - pending a parliamentary review - those   
   with certain mental health conditions.   
      
   The country now has one of the highest rates of medically assisted   
   deaths in the world, 5.1 per cent, or a total of 16,499 deaths in 2024,   
   the latest year for which there is data.   
      
   The fastest-growing category in Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying   
   (MAiD) statistics is now not a specific illness but a catch-all labeled   
   'other'.   
      
   MAiD deaths in that category nearly doubled to 4,255 in 2023 from a year   
   earlier, amounting to 28 per cent of all assisted suicide deaths, Sonu   
   Gaind, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor found, according to   
   the Free Press.   
      
   It is in that category that Vafaeian's death falls.   
      
   His mother has explained that Vafaeian got into a bad car accident when   
   he was just 17 years old. He then never went to college and moved quite   
   a few times, from living with his dad to his mom, then his aunt, the   
   Western Standard reports.   
      
   The tipping point then came in April 2022 when he went blind in one eye.   
      
   That September is when he first tried to die of medically assisted   
   suicide, even scheduling a time, date and location for the procedure in   
   Toronto.   
      
   But his plan was foiled when his mother accidentally found the email   
   confirming the appointment and called the doctor, pretending to be a   
   woman seeking MAiD.   
      
   She recorded the conversation she had with the doctor and sent the tape   
   to a reporter, after which the doctor postponed Vafaeian's scheduled   
   procedure, then said he wasn't going through with it.   
      
   When Vafaeian later found out what had happened, he was furious at his   
   mother, saying she had violated his right as an adult to choose death,   
   the Free Press reports.   
      
   But Trudo Lemmens, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of   
   Toronto, who met Vafaeian in 2022 said his mother saved his life.   
      
   'The only reason that Kiano was alive when I met him is because his   
   mother had the guts to go public, not because of the medical community   
   that would've ended his life,' he said.   
      
   He then recounted how he thought Vafaeian's plan was 'dystopian'.   
      
   In the years since, Marsilla said she thought her relationship with her   
   son was on the mend, as she set him up this past September with a   
   fully-furnished condominium near her office in Toronto with a live-in   
   caregiver.   
      
   Marsilla also drafted a written agreement promising Vafaeian $4,000 a   
   month in financial support, and he talked to her about moving into the   
   condo before the winter.   
      
   He even texted his mother at one point, saying he was 'looking forward   
   to a new chapter', as he asked for her help to pay down his debts.   
      
   He said he was trying to save money so that they could travel together,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)