Made to Live, A Physician’s Journey to Save Life, by Paul Saba, M.D. 2020, 118 pages, $16.99 plus shipping + tax. Scan be ordered from www.wordalivepress.ca
The author is a physician who has studied, trained, and worked in Canada, the United States, and internationally in war-torn Lebanon and Somalia, in Bangladesh, Honduras, the Ivory Coast, and Haiti. He currently practices medicine in Montreal, Canada.
He has made presentations opposing assisted suicide and euthanasia in state legislatures and international forums around the world. With a supportive lawyer, he has engaged in what he describes as “gargantuan court battles against both the Quebec and Canadian governments, who have been steamrollers in their attempts to silence any opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia.”
The book’s title, Made to Live, is drawn from an inscription on a family painting made by his seven year old daughter Jessica, who was born with severe congenital cardiac malformation and had struggled, with the support of others, to live. The parents had been offered abortion for Jessica, but chose not to give up on her life. She is now a healthy young girl. Dr. Saba’s strong family and Christian values are the basis of his public defense of good medicine.
The book is made up of short chapters that keep one’s attention. The many references lead us to many publications and websites which take the book well beyond its slim 118 pages.
In a short chapter on the history of devaluing life, he notes that the Supreme Court of Canada’s Carter decision has returned us to Roman times which saw “the abolition of the whole person as a legitimate answer to general human imperfections or specific forms of suffering.” The law at the time ordered the killing of deformed children. The Stoic philosopher Seneca’s view that killing oneself “exhibited freedom and autonomy and preserved dignity” reminds us of the language used today in our courts and parliament to legalize MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying).
In his chapter covering international references, he reveals the link between the Nuremberg Trial and the World Medical Association’s repeated prohibition of euthanasia as it is contrary to medical ethics. Ten million physicians belong to the World Medical Association (WMA). Its 2019 updated declaration states that, “No physician should be forced to participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide, nor should any physician be obliged to make referral decisions to this end.”
Dr. Saba offers many perceptive observations which expose the falsehood of activist language. He reminds us that killing is intentional and is different from dying. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not medical treatments as is claimed. Death is being prescribed for lack of resources which could be provided, and euthanasia could be the only affordable “treatment” for many. He writes “I strongly believe that the confusion of terminology has been a deliberate distraction ploy to obscure the reality of what is being done.”
One chapter uncovers five MAID (Medical Aid in Dying) myths and provides reality checks to destroy the magical and mythical thinking behind them. He believes promoters of so-called medical death have lost their grip on reality.
Another chapter on his experience with the court system calls to mind the noble efforts of so many to prevent the transformation of the meaning of health care. Once transformed, he claims, there is a danger that trust in the medical profession will be destroyed.
Dr. Saba states that euthanasia is the opposite of medicine, state sanctioned killing of citizens is wrong, and that a culture of intentional killing is based on the assumption that only certain lives are worthy of life, a very dangerous ideology.
Doctors know that there is a high risk of misdiagnosis in medicine, and the author provides many interesting anecdotes from his life as a physician about “hopeless” cases who were not abandoned, found hope and lived. Hope drives us to cure many diseases, he writes.
This book underlines how out of touch with reality are the legislators who voted for euthanasia in our Parliament, and how defiant they are in the face of historical events, such as the Nuremberg trial. They care little for the 2500 year old Hippocratic Oath, which countered a culture where people were afraid to go to a physician because of the possibility that they would be killed.
It is also evident that Canadian medical associations feel no qualms about defying the World Medical Association, which officially protects conscience rights and the lives of vulnerable patients. Dr. Saba correctly identifies the atmosphere that leads to euthanasia as moral disengagement and “the current spirit of death.”
Made to Live is a book worth reading, lending and giving. A debt of gratitude is owed to the many physicians who practice genuine compassionate medicine.