A St. Anthony, N.L., mother who says she was told assisted suicide is an option for her 25-year-old daughter wants an apology from Labrador-Grenfell Health.
[...] the Panel was persuaded that the law in Canada [...] should be changed to allow some form of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Putting the philosophical analysis together with the lessons learned from [a] review of the paths taken in other jurisdictions that have moved to more permissive regimes, the Panel considered the options for the design of a permissive regime and suggests the following legal mechanisms for achieving the reform and the core elements of the proposed reform.
Marcia Angell was an editor of the most prestigious medical journal in the world for two decades. She currently gives monthly lectures on ethics to faculty at Harvard Medical School. And she served on a panel that gave advice on medical issues to the White House. But Dr. Angell’s credentials were challenged, Wednesday, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia when a lawyer for the federal Department of Justice tried to prevent her affidavit from being entered in a case concerning physician-assisted suicide.
Our angst is not limited to cases of assisted-suicide. It is rather that engaging in it alters the mission of medicine. It strikes at the very core of our beings as healers. It would leave an indelible imprint on dialogues with all patients. Our worry is anchored in the deep recognition of the vulnerability of sick persons and the power differential that exists in the doctor-patient relationship.
At its policy convention in Calgary this week, the Canadian Medical Association was poised to debate one of the most emotionally charged and ethically perilous issues in medicine: doctor-assisted death. But physicians got bogged down in semantics, in lengthy discussions about the appropriate language to use to describe hastening death at the end of life, and deferred real debate to a later, unspecified date and another unspecified time.
This week, lobbyists for euthanasia appeared to be winning people over to their way of thinking. The 71-year-old physicist Stephen Hawking gave an interview to the BBC in which he was asked whether he supported assisted suicide. “Those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those that help them should be free from prosecution ...” he replied. “But there must be safeguards that the persons concerned genuinely want to end their life and are not being pressurised into it, or having it done without their knowledge and consent.”
In a historic vote in the National Assembly, Quebec has become the first province to legalize doctor-assisted death as part of comprehensive end-of-life legislation. Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, received broad support on Thursday from nearly 80 per cent of MNAs. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard allowed his caucus to vote according to their conscience. The 22 MNAs who voted against were all Liberals, including 10 cabinet ministers.