The Institutional Ordering of Indifference in Canadian Health Care
As the institutional ordering of indifference breeds low levels of informal trust and high levels of anxiety about being made “useless” and “unvaluable,” what begins to emerge is the formulation between the current political order and social status. The inequality between the individual subject and the features of the current political ordering of indifference or the indifference inherent in the hierarchy of powers that be, requires evaluation. What emerges is the materialization of “this bigger picture” in the need for accelerated profit driven revenue in medicine over social case liabilities. The need to accelerate profit driven healthcare at the expense of the “unvaluable subject” who has inherited the social status of “inferior human.” Judith Butler has discussed the institutional ordering of indifference in how lives come to matter or not matter within the U.S. (Butler, 2020).
More recently, Canada is to extend medical assistance in dying (MAID) to the “mentally ill” in 2027. MAID in Canada, according to Canada’s Health Minister Mark Holland, will be extended to psychiatric diagnosis that include depression and personality disorders. It is presumed this extension will also be granted to those individuals in Canada living with addiction who have been deemed “resistant to cure.” The mentally ill are a vulnerable and are frequently labeled “disposable group of people.” These individuals are most likely the victims of childhood trauma, incest, rape, physical assault, and observe domestic violence as it plays out in their relational world.
MAID, in Canada, is already extended to individuals suffering from disabilities as insignificant as hearing loss. As in the case of Alan Nichols, a 61-year-old man, who tried to invoke his right for MAID and who was subsequently denied for depression, successfully invoked it through citing his disability of hearing loss. My father was a disabled individual, handicapped with the use of only one leg. He made arrangements for end of life care (euthanasia in Hospice care). Many critics have rebuked MAID as one woman claimed “it is not healthcare. It is killing a vulnerable depressed patient. Life is a gift and suffering people need to be given proper pain medication and love and support instead of being euthanized. MAID is already being pushed on vulnerable people who do not want it. As profit driven medicine accelerates, end of life care becomes an unprofitable expense and the temptation to eliminate those patients increases. No to MAID or killing vulnerable patients.”
Currently, the issues surrounding the phenomenon of wireless electronic assault torture may contribute to the intentional killing of certain groups or individuals who are considered “vulnerable,” “unvaluable” and “inferior.” Consider the cases of targeted individuals, the Moscow Signal, and Havana Syndrome. In short, the ordering of institutional indifference that set-up the perfect gaslight in their victims. This phenomenon makes malevolent use of emotion as a dark mirror of the therapeutic process known as “mind control.”
Dementia is a neurological disease of the brain and is currently NOT considered “mental illness” but rather a medical disease of which there is no current cure and cognitive decline is progressive and onset. This diagnosis is eligible for MAID in Canada and the US. It is here I want to address the use of wireless electronic assault torture that induces both stimulation and sedation (alertness and forgetfulness/alternating wakefulness and sleepiness) which can mask the truth with an inverse lie: that one may be suffering from a form of dementia or mimic some other type of medical symptomthe wireless electronic targeting induces, and how that lie becomes palatable in the face of an unpalatable truth. (See “The Inversion of Truth: Paradoxical Encounters of Psychoanalysis; Elon Musk’s Monkey Brain Chips and Machine-Brain Interfaces).
The statistics. People who invoke their rights in the U.S. population to use MAID are at the median age of 72. Men, slightly more than women, invoke the right (53% to 47%). And 95% are white. Those with bachelor’s degrees or higher were over represented, roughly double their percentage in U.S. population. 74% have been diagnosed with cancer and 10% with a neurological disease such as dementia. Researchers tiptoe around suggesting systemic racism, which in this instance, might also well be called a form of “genocide.” Currently, it is my understanding that the medications needed to end one’s life are not covered by insurance (Medicare/Medicaid). This means the individual bears the cost for paying for the prescriptions out-of-pocket. And the changes wrought by neoliberal capitalism created a shameful gap between rich and poor in recent decades.
“It is unclear whether these apparent differences result from patient preference or systematic bias; it is plausible that MAID laws, regulations, and clinical processes have been established that unintentionally make it more difficult for patients with less education, from minority backgrounds, or from non-cancer diagnoses to participate. Navigating MAID policies and finding MAID providers may be particularly challenging for individuals with limited resources and high symptom burdens towards the end of life. Most MAID requests must pay for MAID prescriptions out-of-pocket-, as Medicare and other federal health insurance programs do not cover aid in dying. These out-of-pocket costs have risen dramatically.”
On June 26, 1997, the US Supreme Court upheld in the cases of “Washington vs. Glucksberg” and “Vacco vs. Quill” there was “no constitutional right to die with dignity.” But then, on January 17, 2006, the US Supreme Court upheld, in the case of “Gonzalez vs. Oregon”, “the right to MAID services is a constitutional right to dying with dignity.” The court did not address issues with how patients may be coerced into invoking the right unwillingly and how unscrupulous family members might work against their own family members. Facts can be obscured.
A survey poll reported, “Only 29% of people receiving pensions agreed with the statement that legalizing euthanasia posed a realistic risk of allowing the unscrupulous to end a patient’s life without consent.” Currently, it is my understanding that no U.S. state allows for physician-assisted suicide for depression or any other mental health related diseases. In addition, to these statistics, and as a sidebar note, Republican voters in the New Hampshire presidential primary election who voted, when polled, reported, “Only 17% of Republican voters care about US foreign policy.” That means, there is no real push to end the social and foreign policy still in force from Bush administration politics (ie: torture programs and mind control programs)! And Donald Trump won that primary. I want to be clear, I am not blaming the Trump administration for the ordering of institutional indifference that has been occurring since the Reagan administration and the new politics of Bush-era social and foreign politics post 9/11. Only shedding a light of illumination on how vulnerable groups are being mistreated.
Furthermore, the development of Canada’s new MAID law bears the watermark stains of the eugenics movement from the past and the genocide of the Third Reich during World War II. In its moral dimension, eugenics rejected the doctrine that all human beings are born equal and redefined moral worth purely in terms of genetic fitness. Its racist elements included pursuit of a pure “Nordic race” or “Aryan” genetic pool and the eventual elimination of “unfit” races. The targets in the German population during the Holocaust were Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, the elderly, people with disabilities thus supporting an “Aryan genetic pool.”
Book Sources:
Judith Butler. (2020). The Force of Nonviolence: An ethico-polical bind. New York. Vero.
First Do No Harm: The Paradoxical Encounters of Psychoanalysis, Warmaking, and Resistance. (2010) Adrienne Harris and Steven Botticelli (editors). New York. Routledge.
Electronic Sources:
https://globalnews.ca/news/10265616/maid-expansion-delayed-2027/
https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-023-00971-4
https://alzheimer.ca/en/help-support/im-caring-person-living-dementia/end-life-care/medical-assistance-dying#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%9Cmental%20illness%E2%80%9D%20classification%20under%20MAID%20law%20%E2%80%9Cincludes,personality%20disorders%2C%E2%80%9D%20says%20the%20Government%20of%20Canada%E2%80%99s%20website
https://proclivitysprinciplewisdom.medium.com/the-inversion-of-truth-paradoxical-encounters-of-psychoanalysis-1cf1bba8e8be
https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/09/16/medical-aid-dying-maid-16526
https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/advocacy/parliamentary-review/maid-for-mental-illness/#:~:text=Medical%20assistance%20in%20dying%20%28MAID%29%20for%20those%20with,and%20territories%20time%20to%20prepare%20for%20MAID%20MD-SUMC
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_United_States
https://healthresearchfunding.org/19-great-voluntary-euthanasia-statistics/
https://www.statista.com/chart/28130/assisted-suicide-numbers/
https://euthanasia.procon.org/historical-timeline/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/health/death-dying-dignity.html
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/bioethics/article/view/12079#:~:text=Most%20people%20with%20disabilities%20are,and%20are%20therefore%20not%20eligible
https://www.reuters.com/technology/neuralink-implants-brain-chip-first-human-musk-says-2024-01-29/
