In 2022, Margaret Marsilla had been successful in preventing her son, Kiano Vafaeian, from dying under Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program

On Dec. 30, 2025, Vafaeian was granted a physician assisted suicide under Under Canada’s MAiD program

The law is that patients must show they have an ‘intolerable’ condition that cannot ‘be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable’

Death certificate says Vafaeian’s assisted suicide was based on the ‘antecedent causes’ of blindness, severe peripheral neuropathy or [damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that causes pain and numbness] and diabetes

Marsilla disagrees, noting that her son did not suffer from any terminal illnesses, but was just blind and struggling with complications from type 1 diabetes, as well as mental health issues

‘I promise I will fight tooth and nail for my son and other parents who too have children that suffer from mental illness,’ said Marsilla, describing her son’s physician-assisted death as ‘disgusting on every level’

In her Facebook post Margaret Marsilla, excoriated the system that facilitated the death of her otherwise mentally stable son Kiano Vafaeian, [photo], 26, from physician assisted suicide on Dec. 30, under Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program [MAID]

A Canadian family is left distraught after a 26-year-old diabetic and blind man died of ‘physician-assisted suicide’, despite the best efforts of his family to prevent his death by euthanasia.
In 2022, Margaret Marsilla successfully blocked her the suicide request of son Kiano Vafaeian under Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program back in 2022.
Marsilla noted that her son was not afflicted by any terminal illness, instead was just blind and struggling with complications from type 1 diabetes as well as mental health issues.
Fast forward to December 2025, Vafaeian was granted a physician assisted suicide under Canadian law – which states only that patients must show they have an ‘intolerable’ condition that cannot ‘be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable.’
‘Four years ago, here in Ontario, we were able to stop his euthanasia and get him some help,’ Marsilla posted on Facebook in the aftermath. 
‘He was alive because people stepped in when he was vulnerable – not capable of making a final, irreversible decision.’

Dr Ellen Wiebe, [photo], ultimately performed the procedure on Kiano Vafaeian on December 30. Wiebe, aka “DR DEATH #2”, has euthanized over 400 patients, under the MAiD program

She went on to call her son’s physician-assisted death on December 30, 2025, ‘disgusting on every level,’ as she vowed in her post, ‘I promise I will fight tooth and nail for my son and other parents who too have children that suffer from mental illness.
‘No parent should ever have to bury their child because a system – and a doctor – chose death over care, help or love,’ Marsilla wrote.
In the lead up to to his death, on December 18, Margaret Marsilla had called her son to say she had given up on trying to stop a doctor from killing him. “I already stopped you once,” she said. “I’m not going to do it again. I don’t want you to keep hating me, so I’m not going to come there.”
Marsilla had just learned that her son, was approved for “medical assistance in dying” [MAiD].
Vafaeian would receive MAiD in Vancouver by a physician, now co-terminus with MAiD, Dr. Ellen Wiebe, also known as “DR DEATH #2.” She approved Vafaeian’s death based on mental illness.
Wiebe, a member of the Clinician’s Advisory Council for Dying with Dignity Canada [DWDC], a Canadian MAiD lobbying group, and a University of British Columbia professor, has a long history with MAiD, as she is one of the leading clinicians contributing to its administration.

The family has maintains that Kiano Vafaeian [left],did not have any terminal illness

In 2016 when Canada legalized assisted dying, the program was initially limited to terminally ill adults whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable. 
However, with eligibility expanded in 2021, to include people with chronic illness, disability, and soon – pending a parliamentary review – patients with certain mental health conditions, Canada now has one of the highest rates of medically assisted deaths in the world with 5.1 per cent, or a total of 16,499 deaths in 2024, the latest year with available data.
Significantly, the fastest-growing category in Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) statistics is not recorded against a specific illness, but a catch-all category labeled ‘Other’.
Reported MAiD deaths under the category ‘Other’ nearly doubled to 4,255 in 2023 from a year earlier, amounting to 28 per cent of all assisted suicide deaths. Vafaeian’s death falls also falls under this category.

According to the reports, medically assisted deaths in Canada has doubled in recent years. The country now has one of the highest rates of euthanasia in the world

To understand her sons’ condition Marsilla explains, Kiano was involved got into a bad auto accident when he was 17. Consequently he never got a college education. He would end up bouncing around, living with his dad to his mom, then his aunt.
The tipping point then came in April 2022 when Kiano lost sight in one eye. 
His initial attempt at medically assisted suicide, happened months later in September, 2022.
Kiano Vafaeian even scheduling a time, date and location for the procedure which was to take place in Toronto, only for his planned suicide to be foiled when his mother accidentally found the email confirming the appointment.
She called the doctor, pretending to be a woman seeking MAiD. Marsilla recorded the conversation she had with the doctor and sent the tape to a reporter, after which the doctor postponed Vafaeian’s scheduled procedure, ultimately declining to going through with it.
Vafaeian when he later found out what had happened was furious, accusing his mother of violating his right as an adult to choose death.
 In the aftermath Trudo Lemmens, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Toronto, who met Vafaeian in 2022, would say Marsilla saved her son’s life.
‘The only reason that Kiano was alive when I met him is because his mother had the guts to go public, not because of the medical community that would’ve ended his life,’ Lemmens said. 
He then recounted how he thought Vafaeian’s plan was ‘dystopian’.

Kiano Vafaeian, [photo], was blind and suffering from complications from diabetes, as well as mental health issues. He first, failed attempt, trying to die of medically assisted suicide was in September 2022

Despite the falling out, the relationship between mother and son in the years since, Marsilla believed, was on the mend.
In September 2025, she set him up with a fully-furnished condominium near her office in Toronto with a live-in caregiver. Marsilla said that she also drafted a written agreement promising her son $4,000 a month in financial support, and they discussed his moving into the condo before the winter.
He even texted his mother at one point, saying he was ‘looking forward to a new chapter’.
He asked for help aid towards paying down his debts
He disclosed that he was trying to save money so that they could travel together, but then flew to New York City alone to buy a pair of newly-released Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses, which some have praised as a breakthrough technology for those who are blind. Marsilla was uneasy about his traveling alone, but he sent her texts with photos and videos wearing his new high tech sunglasses.
At one point, Vafaeian admitted he was afraid the new technology would not help him and was worried he had wasted his mother’s money.
‘God has sealed a great pair for you,’ she then responded.
‘I know God protects me,’ he wrote back.

According to the death certificate, Vafaeian’s assisted suicide was based on the ‘antecedent causes’ of blindness, severe peripheral neuropathy or [damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that causes pain and numbness] and diabetes

By October, Marsilla bought Vafaeian a gym membership and 30 personal training sessions, all of which he used.
‘He was so happy that he was working out and getting healthy,’ Marsilla said. 
Soon, though, he walked away from all of it, as his mother said ‘something snapped in his head’.
Vafaeian checked himself into a luxury resort in Mexico on December 15, sharing photos of himself posing with resort staff, before he checked out after just two nights and flew to Vancouver.
Three days later, he texted his mother saying he was scheduled to die from physician assisted suicide the following day.
He then told his sister, Victoria, that if any family member wanted to be there for his final moments, they should catch the last flight out of Toronto.
‘We were obviously freaking out,’ Marsilla said, recounting how she criticized her son for ‘throwing this on us now – right before Christmas’ and asking him, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Vafaeian then responded that he had asked for security to be present if his family showed up to the facility in Vancouver to try to stop him.
But Marsilla said she took it as a sign her son was wavering about his decision to end his life, becoming more encouraged when Vafaeian told her the next day that his assisted suicide had been postponed due to ‘paperwork’.
At that point, Marsilla said she urged him to return home to Toronto, offering to buy him a plane ticket and telling him he had Christmas gifts waiting for him.
‘No I’m staying here,’ he responded. ‘I’m going to get euthanized.’

‘I promise I will fight tooth and nail for my son and other parents who too have children that suffer from mental illness,’ said Marsilla, describing her son’s physician-assisted death as ‘disgusting on every level’, Marsilla

It was Dr Ellen Wiebe who ultimately performed the procedure.
She dedicates half of her medical practice to MAiD and the other half to abortion, contraception care and delivering newborns.
‘I’ve brought more than 1,000 babies into the world and … I have helped more than 500 patients die,’ Wiebe once bragged with a laugh during in an interview with Canadian outlet the Free Press.
She then proceeded to describe assisted suicide as the ‘best work I’ve ever done.
‘I have a very strong, passionate desire for human rights,’ she explained.
‘I’m willing to take risks for human rights as I do for abortion.’
When she was then asked how she determines whether a patient is eligible for MAiD, she said they ‘have long, fascinating conversations about what makes their life worth living – and now you make the decision when it’s been enough.’
But shortly before his suicide, Vafaeian prepared his will at a law firm in Vancouver to sign his will, expressing his wish to the executor that he wanted the ‘world to know his story’.
He wished to advocate that ‘young people with severe unrelenting pain and blindness should be able to access MAiD’ just as terminally ill patients can. 
As written in the death certificate, Vafaeian’s assisted suicide was based on the ‘antecedent causes’ of blindness, severe peripheral neuropathy [damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that causes pain and numbness] and diabetes.