Science

The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation

The measles vaccine has prevented 60 million deaths since 2000. So why are so many children around the world missing out on it?

It's been about one millennia since humans directly observed a core-collapse supernova in the Milky Way. That's strange, since there should be 1 or 2 every century. By working with neutrino detectors, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory should be able to detect far more supernovae.

Assisted suicide, also known as “medical assistance in dying”, or MAID, has been legal in Canada since 2016 when the country’s Supreme Court ruled that “eligible adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions” were entitled to medical assistance to end their lives.

In 2021 the permitted conditions for MAiD were expanded to this standard:

9.1.5 the person has a grievous and irremediable medical condition. These criteria are met only where the provider and assessor are of the opinion that:

(a) the person has a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability;
(b) the person is in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; and
(c) the illness, disease, or disability or that state of decline causes the person enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to the person and cannot be relieved under conditions that the person considers acceptable.

(You can read the current MAID standards here.)

In the past MAID was largely restricted to people with a terminal illness, but now it includes patients with a medical condition that may not be terminal but causes physical or psychological sufffering that is intolerable. This thus includes people who want to end their lives because they’re suffering psychologically and/or physically with a medical condition and have found no relief. (“Depression”, however, does not qualify you in Canada for MAID; you must be suffering from a medical condition in a way that is intolerable. Nor can “depression” be listed on the death certificate—only the antecedent medical conditions that cause suffering.)  Similar standards apply in the Netherlands; however, in that country intolerable and irremediable mental distress itself qualifies you for euthanasia. (Subramanya wrote about this in a previous Free Press article, “I’m 28. And I’m scheduled to die in May.“)  The Guardian gives the Dutch standards:

Under Dutch law, to be eligible for an assisted death, a person must be experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement”. They must be fully informed and competent to take such a decision.

How is euthanasia performed in Canada ? The National Standards say this (these are limited to adults over 18 of sound mind, though if you have dementia you can order MAID in advance so long as you do it when you are in a period of compos mentis):

There are 2 methods of medical assistance in dying available in Canada.

Method 1: a physician or nurse practitioner directly administers a substance that causes death, such as an injection of a drug. This is sometimes called clinician-administered medical assistance in dying.

Method 2: a physician or nurse practitioner provides or prescribes a drug that the eligible person takes themselves, in order to bring about their own death. This is sometimes called self-administered medical assistance in dying.

Subramanya’s new article in The Free Press discusses the case of Kiano Vafeian, a 26-year-old Canadian who was blind and struggling with Type 1 diabetes with attendant severe neuropathy.  This had made hin depressed and he asked for MAID. He eventually got it and died from one of the two methods above. His death certificate said that his MAID was prompted by blindness and severe peripheral neuropathy; depression was not listed.  You can read the story, if you subscribe, by clicking on the screenshot below, or reading the free archived article here.

People are alarmed by assisted suicide, and the opponents are often religious.  Regardless, the proportion of all deaths that occur by MAID in Canada is in the range of 5-7%, and are rising. Here’s a graph of the increase from the article:

And the fate of requests for MAID. Note that most are approved.

You will be familiar with the reasons for objections to euthanasia. For very religious people, it is often that people should die when God wants them to go, regardless of their suffering (I call this the “Mother Teresa objection”). More rational people see MAID as a slippery slope, especially for someone like Kiano who wasn’t terminal. The new conditions, they say, will lead people who could otherwise lead tolerable lives to be euthanized in a moment of despair. (I’ll put some of the quotes below.) But of course, doctors have to testify that the euthanized patient did meet the criteria, so presumably they would investigate whether any depression could be cured (this is what they do in the Netherlands).  It’s not clear that Kiano was treated for his depression, though it’s implied, but to my mind I can understand how blindness and diabetes in a young man, with the diabetes slowly destroying his body, is sufficient to ethically permit euthanasia.

Kiano’s mother objected to his euthanasia because he seemed to have moments of enjoyment before he was put to sleep: he went to Mexico on vacation, joined a health club, and got a nice condominium in Toronto with a full-time caregiver paid for by mom. But it wasn’t enough.  He requested and got MAID on December 30, 2024.

Here are some opinions of non-relatives opposed to Kiano’s MAID:

Sonu Gaind, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor, told me that the fastest-growing category in the country’s MAID statistics is not cancer, heart disease, or any specific illness. It is a catch-all labeled as “other.” MAID deaths in the “other” category nearly doubled to 4,255 in 2023 from a year earlier, adding up to 28 percent of all assisted-suicide deaths, Gaind’s research found.

When I told Gaind about Vafaeian and what he had been through, Gaind responded: “I’m not denying his suffering, but it doesn’t paint a picture of someone who is constantly suffering. That contradiction should trouble people.”

He said that Canada’s assisted-suicide system “has been set up so that if the person says their suffering is intolerable, assessors will say, ‘Who am I to question that?’ ”

and

David Lepofsky, a blind lawyer and disability-rights advocate in Toronto, said that focusing on suffering rather than pain invites broad, subjective interpretations—and that the MAID process lacks any independent safeguards before death is delivered. “Blindness doesn’t cause pain,” Lepofsky said. “Millions of us live good, independent lives.”

and

Ramona Coelho, a family physician and member of Ontario’s MAID Death Review Committee, said provincial oversight reports increasingly show in general that the person’s suffering appeared to be driven less by medical decline than by loneliness, social distress, and fear of the future. “Young people relapse, and they also recover,” Coelho told me. Allowing government-sanctioned assisted suicide “during periods of acute vulnerability risks mistaking transient suffering for permanent decline.”

However, a doctor who performs MAID says this:

These are not people who seek assisted suicide “because of mental illness alone,” Wiebe insisted when we talked. “They have other things. . . . That’s what all of my experience is.”

Remember that chronic depression is a medical condition that is sometimes incurable and causes the same intolerable suffering specified by Canadian law (read the Subramanya’s previous [archived] account of a Dutch woman who requested and got euthanasia on the basis of severe and untreatable depression).

Some physicians object to MAID because their brief is to save lives (“First, do no harm”), but that is misguided. Throughout the U.S., for example, physicians often end the lives of suffering terminal patients by giving them an overdose of morphine. This is MAID, though it’s not given for depression. In 12 American states, though, including Illinois, assisted dying is legal.

The objections to Kiano’s euthanasia seem to me misguided—based on someone’s subjective opinion of the sufferer’s feelings. Gaind questions whether Kiano’s suffering really is intolerable.  He doesn’t seem to understand that such people can have, or act out, moments of seeming normality. Lepofsky, also blind, avers that his own sightlessness is tolerable to him, so why isn’t it tolerable to Kaiano? (He seems to forget that Kiano is suffering from painful effects of type 1 diabetes.) And Coelho doesn’t realize that proper treatment of people seeking MAID for mental illness might not cure severe depression.  In the case of 28-year-old Zoraya ter Beek in the Netherlands, the woman had tried many types of treatment and drugs for mental illness, and none of it worked. She wanted to end the pain of living, which had gone on for years, and I can fully understand that. (She died with assistance in 2024.)

It seems to me that the Canadian law doesn’t go far enough: it should consider mental illness alone sufficient grounds for euthanasia IF it is intolerable and doctors have been unable to relieve it over a substantial period of time. If doctors recognize that, who are other people to say that the mental distress is tolerable?

I think it’s time to realize that we should let some people go even if they are not medically terminally ill, for to do otherwise is to allow suffering that can’t be cured.  I am not worried about a “slippery slope,” which can be avoided with proper medical supervision before euthanasia. I am more worried about people suffering their whole lives and not being allowed to have a peaceful death with dignity. The alternative is a self-inflicted end by hanging, jumping from a building, or lying down in front of a train. Is that what we want?

I will add a poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies

Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century

This is the last batch I have, so please send in your good wildlife photos. I know some of you out there are hoarding them. Don’t make me beg!

Fortunately, UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson has sent some photos of life in tide pools. Abby’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

The weather over New Year’s was stormy; most of these pictures were taken when the rain let up for a few hours.   There are generally fewer creatures visible at this time of year in any case-—the big surge in intertidal species happens in the spring in Northern California.   An exception was one particular species of nudibranch,  Phidiana hiltoni, of which there were dozens for some reason.

Genus Heptacarpus (some kind of shrimp). Not a great photo, but the color is true, and if you look closely you can see she’s carrying eggs:

Superfamily Mytiloidea (some kind of mussel). Tidepools make you very aware of how much we don’t know.  This mussel species moved into my local pools in 2022, and this ID is still the best I have for it:

Pisaster ochraceus (Ochre star) Admiring his reflection:

Pollicipes polymerus (Gooseneck barnacle). The red “lips” on this cluster (common this time of year) I’ve read variously are because of the shade they’re in, the cool weather, high hemoglobin levels, or all of the above:

A baby gooseneck barnacle:

Velutina velutina (velvet shell snail):

Family Ampithoidae (some kind of amphipod). Again not a great photo but the spectacular color is true. The next photo shows the whole animal:

Family Ampithoiuidae:

Phidiana hiltoni (nudibranch) This was the species there were dozens of, with very few other species putting in an appearance:

It cleared up just at sunset one day, for this nice view over Bodega Head:

Lately we’ve been reporting about a series of studies on the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), NASA’s flagship telescope mission for the 2040s. These studies have looked at the type of data they need to collect, and what the types of worlds they would expect to find would look like. Another one has been released in pre-print form on arXiv from the newly formed HWO Technology Maturation Project Office, which details the technology maturation needed for this powerful observatory and the “trade space” it will need to explore to be able to complete its stated mission.

Quantum technology has reached a turning point, echoing the early days of modern computing. Researchers say functional quantum systems now exist, but scaling them into truly powerful machines will require major advances in engineering and manufacturing. By comparing different quantum platforms, the study reveals both impressive progress and steep challenges ahead. History suggests the payoff could be enormous—but not immediate.

There’s a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4%), but non-negligible. And scientists are starting to prepare both for the bad (massive risks to satellites and huge meteors raining down on a large portion of the planet) and the good (a once in a lifetime chance to study the geology, seismology, and chemical makeup of our nearest neighbor). A new paper from Yifan He of Tsinghua University and co-authors, released in pre-print form on arXiv, looks at the bright side of all of the potential interesting science we can do if a collision does, indeed, happen.

Bright white rocks spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover are rewriting what we thought we knew about ancient Mars. These aluminum-rich clays, called kaolinite, usually form on Earth only after millions of years of heavy rainfall in warm, humid environments—conditions similar to tropical rainforests. Their presence on today’s cold, dry Mars suggests the planet once had abundant rain, flowing water, and possibly lush oases long ago. Even more puzzling, the rocks are scattered across the landscape with no obvious source nearby, hinting at dramatic ancient events like floods, river transport, or asteroid impacts.

An evolution-inspired framework for how quantum fuzziness gives rise to our classical world shows that even imperfect observers can eventually agree on an objective reality

Physicists have discovered that hidden magnetic order plays a key role in the pseudogap, a puzzling state of matter that appears just before certain materials become superconductors. Using an ultra-cold quantum simulator, the team found that even when magnetism seems disrupted, subtle and universal magnetic patterns persist beneath the surface. These patterns closely track the temperature at which the pseudogap forms, suggesting magnetism may help set the stage for superconductivity.

How long did it take to establish the water content within Jupiter’s Galilean moons, Io and Europa? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of scientists from the United States and France investigated the intricate processes responsible for the formation and evolution of Io and Europa. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of two of the most unique moons in the solar system, as Io and Europa are known as the most volcanically active body in the solar system and an ocean world estimated to contain twice the volume of Earth’s oceans, respectively.

Excavations at an opencast mine in Greece have uncovered two wooden objects more than 400,000 years old that appear to have been fashioned as tools by an unknown species of ancient human

Icy comets contain common crystals that can only be formed in extreme heat. But comets reside in the frigid outer reaches of the Solar System. How did these materials form, and how did they find their way into the Solar System's cold fringes?

For years, scientists noticed that magnetic fields could improve steel, but no one knew exactly why. New simulations reveal that magnetism changes how iron atoms behave, making it harder for carbon atoms to slip through the metal. This slows diffusion at the atomic level and alters steel’s internal structure. The insight could lead to more efficient, lower-energy ways to make stronger steel.

A woman's fertility can be partly gauged by levels of a hormone that reflects how many eggs she has. Now, scientists have built a strip that changes colour according to levels of this hormone, which is present in period blood, into a menstrual pad

JWST has created a map of dark matter that is twice as good as anything we have had before, and it may help unravel some of the deepest mysteries of the universe

The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature