Health-Care ‘Serial Killers’ Could Potentially Abuse Canada’s Assisted Dying Program: Study

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program may be vulnerable to exploitation by “health-care serial killers” due to its permissive safeguards and growing number of patients, a peer-reviewed study says. Health-care serial killing (HSK) is defined as the intentional, individual, and sequential killing by medical workers—often physicians and nurses—of “helpless or dependent persons under their care,” according to the study published on Aug. 2 in the journal HealthCare Ethics Committee Forum. The study notes that clinicians involved in HSK often target patients who share the same clinical traits as those eligible for MAID. It raises heightened concern about Canadian law defining MAID as a “non-culpable” form of homicide, exempting practitioners from criminal liability in cases where patient deaths might otherwise raise suspicion, the study says....