Parichehr Salasel believed that where there was life, there was hope. Two doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre disagreed, saying that it is in the best interests of her husband, Hassan Rasouli, who is in a permanent vegetative state, to be taken off life support and provided with palliative care until his death. The seven-month medical conflict over Mr. Rasouli’s fate ended on Wednesday when Ontario’s top court took Ms. Salasel’s side in a ruling that is expected to reignite for Canadians the emotional issue of how to handle end-of-life decisions and whether extraordinary medical interventions save lives or merely prolong dying.
The Supreme Court of Canada will go ahead later this year and set a legal framework for when patients in a vegetative state can be withdrawn from life support. The court rejected a request this morning from the family of a severely ill Toronto man, Hassan Rasouli, to withdraw the case from its docket on the grounds that Mr. Rasouli recently passed into a higher degree of consciousness.