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Comment by OgsyedIE | Hacker News Reader

With over 50,000 euthanasias carried out in Canada to date, has anybody assessed whether they are disproportionately prescribed to certain demographics or not?

If they are equally distributed then it's unlikely to be coercive in nature but if there is coercion then the proportion of usage by demographic is unlikely to match those demographic's respective proportions in the total Canadian population.

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The point isn't that assisted suicide as implemented in canada is objectively bad, it's that it's extremely ignorant and uncharitable to paint all opposition to assisted suicide as "common lizard brain reaction" and "people don't like, or feels icky, and they have no idea why they feel that way".

That's most of it, though. Also, who cares about being charitable towards folks who would deny others compassionate care?

That does not sound viable to me at all.

How would you distinguish between the government coercing a demographic into suicide and that demographic just having a higher-than-average predisposition for it? E.g. people with depression or chronic illness/pain.

Well that's where it gets tricky -- what variables are you allowed to control for in this analysis? Not to spoil anyone, but this is what Soylent Green is about: people on the edges of society aren't actively coerced into euthenasia, but the presence of a more abstract level of coercion is made clear.

In terms of contemporary Canada, what if First Nations people end up using it much more often because they have much higher rates of poverty and drug abuse in their communities? On an individual bodily autonomy level that feels like fair game, but on a societal level the injustice is blatant.

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