Canada’s medical assistance in dying now accounts for 1 in 20 deaths. IMA President Dr. Joseph Varon examines the moral cost to modern medicine.

When Canada legalized medical assistance in dying in 2016, it was presented as a measure of compassion and restraint, reserved for exceptional cases near the end of life. That is not how the program has developed. By 2023, more than 15,000 Canadians were dying through MAID each year, accounting for roughly one in twenty deaths nationwide. Early 2024 figures were higher still, while eligibility had expanded well beyond its original limits.

Dr. Joseph Varon, President and Chief Medical Officer of the Independent Medical Alliance, has spent decades in intensive care medicine, working to keep critically ill patients alive. The rapid growth of Canada’s MAID program troubled him enough to write about it.

In a new article published in the Journal of Independent Medicine, Dr. Varon examines what this expansion means for patients, physicians, and the profession itself. He describes it as a quiet expansion of death and warns of a growing cost he calls “moral fatigue.” His article considers why medicine has been slow to reckon with that cost and where the profession may be heading.

“I was quite troubled when I first heard about Canada’s MAID program. That got me to write a piece of my mind about why we are where we are at this point in time.” — Joseph Varon

Writing from the perspective of a physician whose career has centered on preserving life, Dr. Varon asks how quickly that responsibility is being rewritten—and what the change demands of patients, doctors, and medicine itself.

📖 Read and Download the Full Paper

The Quiet Expansion of Death: Canada’s MAID Program and the Moral Fatigue of Modern Medicine (JIM Vol. 2, No. 4, 2026) — Author: Joseph Varon

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👉 Visit the Journal of Independent Medicine to create a free account and download the full article.

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