A London, Ontario physician with an overly casual way of handling patient requests for euthanasia has agreed to a six month supervision of his license after two incidents, the first of which was how he met with one patient in a Tim Horton’s parking lot to make the assessment before driving the man to a nearby mortuary processing facility to be, uh, processed, and the other a turn-around house call after an improper dose to a man suffering from terminal cancer, the National Post reports.

In the Tim Horton’s call, Dr James MacLean had in January 2024 been texting with 45 year-old Thomas Dillon, who suffered from Crohn’s disease so badly it left him unable to work which in turn led to mental and drug/alcohol abuse issues. Sick of constantly depending on family, Dillon turned to MacLean to approve him for “MAID” – medical assistance in death – as it’s known up in Maple Land, and after the quick consultation in a Tim Hortons parking lot, Dillon was greenlit and the only question was where to do it. Since MacLean isn’t so unprofessional to actually euthanize a guy in a donut place parking lot – only the decision to allow him to be euthanized happened there – they had weighed certain options. Dillon’s parents’ home was out of the question as they opposed their son killing himself so instead they decided on what was described as an “industrial” mortuary nearby.

It’s not clear if MacLean actually ended up administering the lethal injections to Dillon at the facility but the article’s text seems to suggest someone else handled that part. The setting of the final assessment for MAID eligibility and that it was only one visit – as well as the boundary-crossing nature of MacLean personally driving Dillon to the mortuary – were the ethical breaches found in the case by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO)’s MAID conduct review board.

The other case however was very much hands-on malpractice on MacLean’s part. The timing and further details are not public as to shroud the already anonymous patient’s identity, but what happened is that a man suffering from terminal cancer had weeks prior signed a pre-consent for MAID in the event that he was too incapacitated to even nod yes to allow a qualified doctor to administer the drugs. The problem was that MacLean forgot to bring with him a syringe of a crucial muscle relaxant but went ahead with the main drug – propofol – anyway, thinking that he had enough of the shit that killed Michael Jackson to kill off an essentially comatose man.

MacLean however did not wait long enough to see whether the patient had indeed expired and had already left by the time someone called to tell him that the man had suddenly began breathing again despite there being no breath or pulse when he had left. He turned around and administered more propofol to the man, pronouncing the patient dead again, for real that second time around.

MacLean and his wife Susan’s practice, Westmount Family Physicians in London, has a 3.71 user rating on Google, nearly all either five stars or one star. Only one of them, a wordless one star rating, postdates media coverage of MacLean’s questionable skills at assisted suicide-related medicine.