Category: Procedures & Services

Hospitals should be able to opt out of doctor-assisted death, expert says

Ottawa Citizen

Elizabeth Payne

Neither doctors nor the institutions where they work should be forced to offer physician-assisted suicide, an expert on end-of-life decision making said Monday.

Judith Wahl, of Toronto’s Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, said Ontario should be able to create a system in which physician assisted death is accessible for those who qualify and want it, without forcing institutions and physicians to act against their beliefs.

“The provincial government can authorize those exemptions. I think people should be able to opt out and facilities should be able to opt out. I think we have to look at the system as a whole.”

With months to go until there is a law on physician assisted dying, the issue is already controversial. Catholic hospitals and health institutions across Ontario  –  including Bruyere Continuing Care in Ottawa  –  say they will not offer physician assisted death once it becomes law later this year. Bruyere is Ottawa’s only hospital with an acute palliative care ward. . . [Full text]

 

A Warning from Canada on Assisted Suicide: Physicians’ Conscience Rights at Stake

CNSNews.com

Lynn Wardle

Historically, assisted suicide (aiding a person to take his or her own life) was prohibited by the common law in Canada, as in all common law jurisdictions. Indeed, at common law suicide resulted in forfeiture of all goods and chattels of the suicide victim to the state.  A person who assisted a person to commit suicide also committed a felony.

Prohibitions against attempting suicide and assisting suicide were codified in Canada in 1892.  The attempting suicide law was challenged as infringing upon the protection for individual liberty in section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but the criminal prohibition against assisted suicide was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General) in 1993.

The statutory prohibition of attempting suicide was repealed in Canada in 1972.  However, the criminal prohibition against assisting a person to commit suicide remained in Canada.

In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the prohibition of medical assistance in dying violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5.  Now Parliament is working to codify the Carter ruling.

A special parliamentary committee was appointed to consider how to reform the law.  On February 25, 2016, the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying delivered to the Parliament of Canada its Report on “Medical Assistance in Dying: A Patient-Centred Approach, February 2016, 42nd Parliament, 1st Session.”

The Report contains 21 recommendations.  Some of them are unobjectionable, but some are troubling to some thoughtful observers and medical ethicists, and a few are dangerously disrespectful of the rights and consciences of marginalized populations. The Report evades, brushes aside, or bulldozes over some very serious ethical issues. . . [Full text]

 

New Belgian law aims to force doctors into euthanasia

 LifeSite News

Jeanne Smits

BRUSSELS, March 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A handful of Belgian lawmakers are trying to obtain a radical change to the rules governing euthanasia in the country, where so-called “mercy-killing” has been legal since 2002.

Not content with one of the most liberal euthanasia laws in the world, the socialist representatives now want to oblige doctors who have conscientious objections to killing their patients asking for euthanasia, to refer them to a doctor who is prepared to do so. This has been interpreted as a sort of new obligation to accede to all euthanasia requests within a very short period of time, and the wording of the proposed legislation supports this. The changes also include enhanced rights attached to a patient’s “living will” as well as the negation of the right to conscientious objection for institutions. . . [Full text]

 

Doctor-assisted dying: Why religious conscience must be part of the debate

The Globe and Mail

Lorna Dueck

The competing rights of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and access to physician-assisted death are at an impasse in Canada. When the Supreme Court last year struck down Criminal Code prohibitions on doctor-assisted death, the issue of conscience rights jumped urgently into the national discussion. A religiously informed conscience complicates things further, and thousands of health-care professionals and hundreds of religiously based health-care institutions are demanding that their Charter rights be protected.

If the recommendations from the parliamentary committee for new legislation are accepted and approved by the June 6 deadline, Canada would be by far the most liberal country in the world for medical assistance in dying. It would also become the most repressive on conscience rights, because the committee recommended that conscientious objectors refer death-seeking patients to another doctor or health-care facility – something that many people informed by a sense of duty to God and neighbour cannot do. . . [Full text]

 

The forgotten Australian prisoners of war experimented on by the Nazis

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Body Sphere

Amanda Smith

Not all Nazi human experimentations ended with death. Some Australian soldiers may have suffered for years after being guinea pigs for Nazi scientists. Amanda Smith tells their story.

Some of the cruellest, vilest things humans do to each other are done in wartime.

During the Second World War, one of the most shocking things that occurred – in a long list of shocking things – was human medical experimentation in Nazi concentration camps.

Until now, however, it wasn’t known that the Nazis also experimented on Australian POWs.

Konrad Kwiet is the resident historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He’s researching the experiments alongside surgeon and academic George Weisz. . . [Full text]