Category: Procedures & Services

CMAJ

Lauren Vogel

Doctors attending a session on medical aid in dying at the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) General Council supported the use of advance directives and allowing mature minors to access assisted death. However, they split on opening up the service to otherwise healthy people with mental illness.

In a poll, 83% said they would support the use of advance directives to request medical aid in dying in cases where a person was otherwise unable to give consent. Some 69% would support opening the service to “mature minors,” including cases in which a guardian might request assisted death for a terminally ill infant, for example. However, after roundtable discussions, less than half (46%) of doctors polled said they would support assisted death on the basis of mental illness alone. . .  [Full text]

 

The Globe and Mail

André Picard

Canada’s doctors, who have never been staunch supporters of medically assisted death, now seem to be open to a liberalization of the law.

A straw poll conducted on Wednesday at the Canadian Medical Association annual meeting found that 83 per cent of delegates supported allowing “advance directives” – meaning, for example, that people with dementia could, while they are still competent, decide they want an assisted death at a later time.

The informal poll of the 600 delegates also found that 67 per cent backed the idea of “mature minors” being allowed to access assisted death. (A mature minor is someone under 18 who is deemed mature enough to make decisions about their own medical treatment.)

Physicians, however, were far less enthusiastic about allowing assisted death for patients whose sole problem is mental illness: Only 51 per cent backed that idea.

Similar CMA straw polls showed that, in 2013, only 34 per cent of doctors supported assisted dying legislation; that rose to 45 per cent in 2014. . . [Full text]