Steadfast Onlus often assists families in which one or more members fight daily against the most varied of diseases. The protection of life, and therefore of health, is one our fundamental value.

For this reason we want to talk to you about the importance on the use of face mask as a life-saving device, not only against Covid-19, but also for many infections and diseases.

As illustrated in the image, a face mask not only reduce the contagion between people, but also reduces the viral / bacterial / infectious load to which the person is exposed. Exposure to a lower viral load is one of the factors behind a positive outcome for a person affected by the COVID-19 disease.

– If you are in an enclosed, public space, please wear a mask.

– If you are outdoors and you are in a gathering situation, please wear a mask.

– In all conditions where you cannot keep the safety distance, please always wear a mask.

– It is not always possible to know the health history of those in front of you who could be an oncological patient, an immunosuppressed, a transplanted person, not necessarily elderly. Behave in such a way as to protect those in front of you.

Obviously, common sense wants that if you are driving alone in your car, the use of the mask is not necessary as well as in other circumstances in which you are alone or between relatives belonging to your same household (this is different, instead, for family members living in a different household).

After careful review, we came to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence that prolonged use of surgical face mask can have long-term harmful effects on the human body. Carbon dioxide is a gas made up of very small CO2 molecules which are evacuated during respiration. There is nothing that can trap this gas for so long that it can cause harm to your body.

The surgical mask is absolutely disposable, and should be thrown away once it is finished in the period of use indicated on the package as it tends to accumulate impurities.

To limit the consumption of surgical masks, and therefore its cost, you can use a protective protection made of fabric that can be washed daily and sterilized thanks to the steam of ironing. Some models also have the option of a removable filter.

The use of the face mask, however obnoxious and uncomfortable, is a fundamental effort in this moment that will allow our society to gradually return to normal, as the experience of the Asian countries teaches us.

Preserve the lives of the weakest. Wear a mask.

On 24 February 2020, the Federal Government of Canada submitted Bill C-7, an act to amend the Criminal Code on Medically Assisted Death (MAID). If this is passed without change, it will make Canadian euthanasia legislation the most permissive in the world.

The medically assisted death had been decriminalized in Canada with the Carter ruling in 2016. In September 2019, the Québec Supreme Court declared the Federal Law and the Québec Provincial Law on MAID unconstitutional in so far as they provide for the reasonably foreseeable natural death of the applicant as a condition of access, considering this criterion too restrictive and contrary to the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Bill C-7, in response to the Supreme Court’s statement, amends the Criminal Code, repealing the provision requiring a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable in order to benefit from the MAID.

The same bill also specifies that people whose only medical condition is a mental illness cannot benefit from MAID, making it clear that a mental illness is not considered a pathology or disability.

However, this point in the amendment is misleading. The Canadian Euthanasia Act, after the Court’s ruling, states that a person can have access to euthanasia if the pathology, disorder, disability or state of decline leads him/her to endure intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated.

In order to have a real ban on euthanasia for “mental illness” the bill should have correctly defined what is meant by “mental illness”.

In fact, by removing the “terminal illness” requirement, the court decision extended euthanasia even for psychological reasons.

The bill would also repeal the ten-day cooling-off period for the applicant and propose to reduce the number of witnesses, which would avoid the risk of coercion, to one, where the obligation was two, making it legal for that witness to be the patient’s paid personal care provider or healthcare provider.

It seems as if the Canadian euthanasia machine doesn’t want to get in the way, no second thoughts and possibly no witnesses.

At Steadfast Onlus it’ s clear to us how inevitable drift is as soon as the inalienable right to life is suppressed by a law. By amending the legislation to regulate tragic and extreme cases and, within a few years, as in Canada, there will be an exponential increase in deaths from euthanasia because the mesh is being widened more and more and the eligibility criteria for this practice become increasingly lax.

We hope that this bill will be rejected in June 2020, when the federal government will carry out the first of its five-yearly reviews.

We also hope that there will be a change of course and that palliative care will be promoted and encouraged, with at least the same firmness with which euthanasia is offered.

Those who follow and support us, know the story of little Alfie Evans, who we will remember tomorrow the second anniversary of the premature death caused by the detachment of the life support that allowed him to breathe.

An attempt was made to do anything possible to stop a law that believed his best interest was to die because he was incurably ill, therefore unworthy of living.

After long negotiations and endless legal attempts, the only possible step was made: the recognition of the Italian citizenship.

Unfortunately, Alfie did not manage to get to Italy but his tenacity and the strength with which he fought his battle for life have been an example. For this reason, we found it necessary to request to name a street in Rome to honour him: one of our fellow citizens who wanted to live so much to move entire nations, institutions and the Church in order to have the freedom to do so.

Though, there are those who make proposals going exactly in the opposite direction: on 28 April 2020 it will be discussed, in the Roman local government, the proposal of the Democratic Party and the Five Stars Movement to name the gardens of San Giovanni Bosco Square, by placing a plaque, that states “Giardino Piergiorgio Welby – writer and activist for civil liberties (1945- 2006) “.

Piergiorgio Welby, suffering from muscular dystrophy, died in December 2006 due to the detachment of the life support performed by the doctor Mario Riccio, after sedation of the patient.

There was a legal case, which managed to answer some questions, leaving others unsolved: was it legitimate to detach the artificial support? Who was responsible for the detachment? Was the treatment to be considered therapeutic obstinacy?

The judges rightly established that the use of the artificial respirator did not represent therapeutic obstinacy, therefore it was to be considered vital. This is demonstrated by the fact that Welby died as a result of the detachment of the support and needed sedation to relieve the pain that this procedure causes.

Under Article 32 of the Italian Constitution, which gives the patient the possibility of refusing / renouncing medical treatment, the doctor who “pulled the plug” was not sentenced but was considered the necessary tool for the patient no longer in the condition to be able to do it by himself, to exercise this right. With this ruling, the Court opens a big question on the issue related to the role of the doctor who, by his nature and according to the ethical and deontological code he is required to respect, is aimed at saving lives.

Many doubts still remain unsolved, as those concerning also the ethical and moral aspects of this story, which for us at Steadfast Onlus are of essential importance. The human rights are such because they protect and guarantee the person in his entirety, starting from the right to life, without which all other rights do not exist.

We therefore believe it is a dangerous proposal, which exposes those who read the plaque to the risk of believing that, since it was posted by the institutions, this type of practice is good and charitable, therefore right.

Even more dangerous is the proposal that local schools are present at the future inauguration. This means that kids will learn that whatever you want, it is a right to have it.

It does not matter if, doing so, the inviolable rights to life and health are trampled. They will learn that if they fail to perform or become ill and need to be cared for and threated, there will be no reason why it is worth living.

Steadfast Onlus cooperates with schools, educational bodies, universities with the Steadfast Education project for the realization of a training course aimed at the knowledge and awareness of the uniqueness of human life, the related rights and the help and protection of the most vulnerable.

The right battle to fight is the one that guarantees serious or terminally ill patients the closeness and compassion of their loved ones by combining appropriate care, therapy and assistance capable of giving the dignity and value they deserve.

We will continue to defend the weakest. We owe it to those who, like Vincent and the little Charlie, Isaiah and Alfie, fought for what was rightfully theirs!

In 2002, the Netherlands approved the law that legalises euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Since 2016, this law is also been applied to people with dementia who requested it while still aler and fit.

However, the law did not specifically address the issue of patients who might change their minds while they are in an advanced state of dementia and how to act so that this new choice replaces the previous one.

A 74-year-old woman with advanced dementia, in 2016, was euthanised from the doctor of the nursing home where she resided, after she consulted with the woman’s family.

While still alert, the woman said she didn’t want to end up in a nursing home and that she wanted euthanasia when she thought the time has come.

Once entered the nursing home, however, she gave contradictory signals about her will, affirming in some cases that she did not want to die. Eventually, the doctor decided to euthanise her anyway.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office brought the doctor to trial, believing that the interview with the patient about the decisions relating to her end-of-life should have been more explicit and contemplate this situation.

At the same time, concern was expressed about a possible lack of clarity in Dutch law relating to the treatment of patients who lose mental acuity.

In 2019, the Hague court acquitted the doctor because, according to the Court, he was attentive and followed the euthanasia protocol established by Dutch law.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office therefore decided to appeal to the Supreme Court, which last the 21 April and ruled in favour of the doctor.

A worrying sentence for us as Steadfast Onlus for two fundamental reasons:

• we believe that human life is an indispensable good from the beginning to its natural conclusion, with immense value even when dealing with incapable of understanding people and / or suffering from more or less serious physical diseases
• this decision completely reverses the precautionary principle according to which, in doubt or in front of contradictory statements, you have to stop and protect life and NEVER kill.

In 2016 the Supreme Court of Canada’s Carter Decision decriminalised medical assistance in dying (MAID), comparing it to a medical act, thus to the providing of treatments or palliative cares.

Since then, many Canadian MAID providers operate largely independently, due to the lack of a centrally coordinated response to the requests of some patients for voluntary euthanasia, without any concern about individual repercussions.

Not only, around this practice the interest of other organizations, those involved in organ donation, has developed. Three are the main ones in the province: Trillium Gift of Life Network, Transplant Québec and British Columbia Transplant.

So, the next step didn’t take long to come.

The “altruistic” death has become the new frontier of medical assistance in suicide in Canada. If you ask for MAID, it will be thanks to you, to your “humanitarian” gesture, that other citizens on waiting list for a transplant will be able to receive organs and tissues as well as a hope of new life.

Patients who are dying or with a planned medical assisted death, not necessarily terminal, are then promptly contacted by these organizations to discuss the possibility of donating their organs.

The sweet death, always “sold” as the only decent way and possible at home, surrounded by the loved ones, undergoes a marketing transformation, too.

And since medical assisted death, with the consequent removal of organs, must necessarily take place in a hospital, they get sentimental, leveraging on convincing the requesters their gesture is the maximum demonstration of humanity.

According to guidelines issued by the Canadian Medical Association, organ removal cannot take place before the heart has stopped beating, although two Canadian medical researchers and a Harvard bioethicist have questioned how this limit reduces the quality of donated organs.

They say in the New England Journal of Medicine: “A superior model, they suggest, could be to kill the patient by removing his organs. After all, the best organs come from people who are still alive, such as kidney donors. Death by organ removal would be a more efficient method of organ harvesting for assisted suicide patients.”

For us, as Steadfast Onlus, it’s clear then how it becomes indispensable to sweeten this kind of practice, otherwise unacceptable by public opinion, with the appellative of “sweet”, “good” or “altruistic” death, even if it would probably be more correct to say that it is a “utilitarian” death.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1915485