Canada has achieved the first heart transplant from a donor that died from assisted suicide
Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) is a program that euthanizes people who don’t want to live anymore.
In the case of the heart transplant – the donor was a 38-year-old Ontario man battling ALS.
Canada is quickly evolving into a global pioneer of “organ donation after euthanasia” (ODE)
He was declared dead seven minutes after the lethal injection started.
His heart was quickly removed and connected to a specialized machine that “reanimates” it—pumping warm, oxygenated blood to preserve viability—before being rushed across the border to Pittsburgh.
There, in a five-and-a-half-hour window from retrieval to implantation, it saved the life of a 59-year-old American man with heart failure. ‘
The scale of Canada’s ODE dominance is expanding quickly
By the end of 2021, Canada had 136 of the 286 documented worldwide instances of organ donation following euthanasia
In 2024, organs from those donors made up about 5% of Canada’s total 3,212 organ transplants
Peer-reviewed studies warn of the coercion where patients, feeling like a “burden” may speed up their Euthanasia requests to “do something meaningful” through donation – with Euthanasia becoming a driver for death.
Assisted Suicide deaths are nearing 15,000 each year ***
136 of 286 global “Organ Donation after Euthanasia” (ODE) cases by 2021 were Canadian.
- 5% of all organ transplants in Canada in 2024 used organs from the euthanized.
Critics say the practice is normalizing a pathway where vulnerable people are being harvested for others
