Doctors have the right and the ethical responsibility to pull patients off life support if they decide treatment is futile – and should not need patient or family consent to do so, lawyers for two doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital will argue in Ontario’s highest court. The Court of Appeal’s decision will not only determine the fate of a man who has been comatose in a Toronto hospital for most of the time since he moved to Canada from Iran, it could have wide-ranging implications for the ability of patients to determine the course of their treatment and the right of medical professionals to make those decisions.
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Court of Canada will go ahead later this year and set a legal framework for when patients in a vegetative state can be withdrawn from life support.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.
The Supreme Court of Canada heard the case of Toronto patient Hassan Rasouli Monday, which centres on the complex and often deeply painful issue of who should decide end-of-life care. With an aging demographic, increased life expectancy and ever more sophisticated technological interventions, these kinds of cases will almost certainly become more frequent. This is a welcome chance for the country’s highest court to clarify how end-of-life treatment should proceed when a physician and a patient’s family disagree.
The wife and son of a comatose man with an incurable disease have demanded he be kept alive. Doctors at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have decided to withhold ventilation in the event of an emergency.