Vafaeian’s family is now pushing for the reversal of the MAID provision that qualifies individuals whose deaths are not ‘reasonably foreseeable.’
The family of a 26-year-old Canadian man who was recently euthanized is speaking out against the law that allowed for his death after a doctor reportedly “coached” him on how to qualify for physician-assisted suicide.
Kiano Vafaeian was euthanized on Dec. 30, and his certificate of death “listed the ‘antecedent causes’ as blindness, severe peripheral neuropathy (damage to nerves that causes pain and numbness), and diabetes,” according to The Telegraph. However, Fox News reported this week that Vafaeian’s parents — who said they did not learn of his death until days later — argued medical records fail to support the severe peripheral neuropathy diagnosis reported on the document.
“Vafaeian was rejected by multiple doctors in Ontario before he sought out Dr. Ellen Wiebe, a prominent MAID [“Medical Assistance in Dying”] provider, in British Columbia,” his family told Fox. As The Federalist has previously reported, Wiebe — Canada’s “Doctor Death” — “operates an abortion mill in Vancouver, called the Willow Clinic, where she also performs assisted suicides.” She thinks helping people kill themselves is “the best work I’ve ever done.” In 2018, she reportedly bragged about operating at the limits of what is legal.
“We believe that she was coaching him … on how to deteriorate his body and what she can possibly approve him for and what she can get away with approving him for,” Kiano Vafaeian’s mother, Margaret Marsilla, told Fox. “Because if he had spoken back in 2024, and he was a good candidate for approving MAID, she would have done it right away, but she didn’t.”
Wiebe told Fox News that “every patient” she approves for “Track 2” — the provision allowing MAID eligibility for patients without a foreseeable natural death — “has unbearable suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition (not psychiatric) with an advanced state of decline in capability and consents to MAID fully informed about treatments to reduce the suffering.”
Canada legalized MAID in 2016, allowing “eligible” adults with “grievous and irremediable” conditions to seek physician-assisted death. The law was expanded in 2021, “remov[ing] the requirement for a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable in order to be eligible.” This new law implemented a “two-track approach” with different sets of procedures based on whether a person’s “natural death” is imminent or not.
According to his family, Vafaeian was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at a young age and a car accident triggered mental health issues as a teen. After going blind in one eye in 2022, Marsilla said Vafaeian became fixated on utilizing MAID.
“He kept on emphasizing about how he could get approved,” Marsilla told Fox. “We never thought there would be a chance that any doctor would approve a 22- or 23-year-old at that time for MAID because of diabetes or blindness.”
Marsilla interceded in a previous effort by Vafaeian to kill himself via MAID. As The Telegraph documented last month, Marsilla learned her son was scheduled for an assisted dying procedure in 2022 and called it out online. The following backlash resulted in the doctor deciding not to follow through. Vafaeian expressed resentment toward his mother for “violat[ing]” his “right” to death.
Following the incident, Vafaeian’s mental health seemed to improve. He was working out, saving money, and seemed optimistic about the future. But, as Marsilla told The Free Press’s Rupa Subramanya, “something snapped in his head” late last year, and he “walked away from all of it.”
Vafaeian’s family is now pushing for legislators to overturn the MAID provision that qualifies individuals whose deaths are not “reasonably foreseeable.” They are also seeking to pass a bill that would restrict the practice for those who have no condition apart from mental illness, Fox reported. Although not currently eligible, patients whose only malady is a mental health issue will have access to MAID in March 2027.
Several Western nations and 13 states in the U.S. have passed assisted suicide legislation. Just this month, New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law legislation that lets doctors help individuals kill themselves if they are projected to die within six months. The law is set to go into effect in August of this year.
