British Columbia’s research while affiliated with University of Waterloo and other places

Medical Assistance in Dying has been legal in Canada since JUNE 2016. This report compiles data from trusted sources for the period of 2018 to 2023 by year and for Q1, Q2 2024. There is a separate section to report on euthanasia in Netherlands 2023 report and a comparison of total euthanasia results 2018-2023

This is to report Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) results for Q1 2024 for provinces who provide reliable data, namely British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. These results are compared to years from 2018-2023.

An overview of MAiD in Canada for 2023: Prohibition of accessing MAiD for persons suffering solely from mental illness will be extended, possibly three years to March 2027 MAiD results for four provinces for 2023 Issues with accessing MAiD in some jurisdictions.

Review of Quebec AMM Medical Assisted Dying Annual Report Health Canada 4th Annual Report for medical assistance in dying 2022 MAiD in provinces in Canada to Q3 2023

This paper presents data for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for four provinces of Canada: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario for 2nd Quarter of 2023. Results are unavailable for other provinces (SK, QC, NB, NS, PE, NL) at this time Section 1: Second Quarter MAiD Results for British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario

This paper presents data up to Q3 2022 for Medical Assistance in Dying in six provinces of Canada. It provides bar charts and tables adapted from data found in the Quebec Rapport Annuel D’Activites issued by Commission sur les soins de vie for the period of ending 31 MAR 20221 and a comparison of five other provinces with results from Quebec for the last three years. Data for five provinces is shown for 2019-Q3 2022.

Abstract: This paper discusses the Health Canada Third Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying1 as well as data for MAiD from five provinces of Canada for Q2 2022 Section 1: The Third Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying (3rd Annual Report) was issued by Health Canada for 2021. This is the sixth year and the sixth Health Canada report since MAiD became legal in Canada in JUNE 2016. It shows some of the inner workings of MAiD in Canada and selected data. However it does not offer a broader discussion of the data. It seems unclear in some aspects. What does the report tell us? What does it not tell us? What still needs to be done? Why is access to MAiD is not equal across Canada? This paper presents bar charts and tables adapted from data found in the 3rd Annual Report in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand format. Data from annual reports for Oregon and the Netherlands are included for comparison. Section 2: Results for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in five provinces of Canada studied show an increase in people choosing MAiD in Q2 2022 as compared to 2021 and previous years across all provinces studied. These results are from data gathered from the usual sources and is presented in bar charts and tables.

New technology, such as social robots, opens up new opportunities in hospital settings. PARO, a robotic pet seal, was designed to provide emotional and social support for older people with dementia. We applied video-ethnographic methods, including conversational interviews and observations with video recording among 10 patient participants while they were using the robot. We also conducted semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups with nursing staff to gain contextual information. Patient and family partners were actively involved in the study as co-researchers. This study reports our findings on the perceptions of 10 patients with dementia about their experiences with PARO in a hospital setting. Thematic analysis yielded three substantive themes: (a) ‘it’s like a buddy’ – the robot helps people with dementia uphold a sense of self in the world, (b) ‘it’s a conversation piece’ – the baby seal facilitates social connection and (c) ‘it makes me happy’ – PARO transforms and humanizes the clinical setting. Our findings help provide a better understanding of the perspectives of patients with dementia on the use of social robots.

In this chapter we describe a 'universal Darwinism' framework which proposes the following. The observable universe results from two types of processes: (1) disorder's tendency to increase in isolated systems (the second law), and (2) Darwinian selection, which produces orderly entities that can withstand the second law. Darwinian processes generate complex order not just in the biological domain but in all five domains of nature. These domains exist in a nested hierarchy as follows (in order of decreasing fundamentalness): cosmological, quantum, biological, neural, and cultural. Each qualifies as a distinct domain because each is characterized by a distinct 'knowledge repository', that is, a cumulative store of information about existence requirements in that domain (e.g. in the biological domain, a genome). Knowledge repositories are probabilistic models which make guesses about how to exist, guesses which are then tested for accuracy by the 'embodied adapted system' (e.g. phenotype) encoded by the knowledge repository. The repository then undergoes a Bayesian update based on test results, and thus becomes less ignorant and entropic. These natural inferential systems evolve according to 'variance-inheritance-selection' Darwinian dynamics, with wiser knowledge repositories leaving more copies behind. Each new domain's knowledge repository computationally transforms the substrate of the earlier domain (e.g., cultural repositories orchestrate the neural substrate), to generate innovative ways of overcoming the second law in the new domain. We conclude that Darwinian theory, as an explanation for the origins of complex order in the universe, may be far more fundamental than is conventionally supposed.

Traditional methods for monitoring the microbiological quality of water focus on the detection of fecal indicator bacteria such as Escherichia coli, often tested as a weekly grab sample. To understand the stability of E. coli concentrations over time, we evaluated three approaches to measuring E. coli levels in water: microbial culture using Colilert, quantitative PCR for uidA and next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Two watersheds, one impacted by agricultural and the other by urban activities, were repeatedly sampled over a simultaneous ten-hour period during each of the four seasons. Based on 16S rRNA gene deep sequencing, each watershed showed different microbial community profiles. The bacterial microbiomes varied with season, but less so within each 10-hour sampling period. Enterobacteriaceae comprised only a small fraction (<1%) of the total community. The qPCR assay detected significantly higher quantities of E. coli compared to the Colilert assay and there was also variability in the Colilert measurements compared to Health Canada recommendations for recreational water quality. From the 16S data, other bacteria such as Prevotella and Bacteroides showed promise as alternative indicators of fecal contamination. A better understanding of temporal changes in watershed microbiomes will be important in assessing the utility of current biomarkers of fecal contamination, determining the best timing for sample collection, as well as searching for additional microbial indicators of the health of a watershed.