American Medical Association: Call It ‘Physician-Assisted Suicide,’ Not ‘Aid-in-Dying’

CNS News

Patrick  Goodenough

CNSNews.com) – Advocates of assisted suicide are dismayed that the largest association of physicians in the U.S. has decided to continue using the term “physician-assisted suicide” rather than euphemisms such as “medical aid-in-dying.”

Meeting in Chicago on Monday, the American Medical Association, by a vote of 360-190, adopted a report by its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) recommending that the term “physician-assisted suicide” continue to be used.

Significantly, the AMA also voted to reaffirm its Code of Medical Ethics’ current policy on assisted suicide – the view that allowing doctors to help patients to die “is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.” That vote was 392-162. . . [Full text]

AMA Reaffirms Stance Against Physician-Aided Death

Medscape

Marcia Frellick

CHICAGO — Delegates voted overwhelmingly to affirm the current policy opposing physician-assisted dying here at the American Medical Association (AMA) 2019 Annual Meeting.

After impassioned testimony from both sides at last year’s meeting, the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs was asked to further examine the issue.

“The AMA House of Delegates concluded that established guidance in the Code of Medical Ethics supports shared decisions that respect the deeply held beliefs of physicians and their patients with respect to assisted suicide,” said AMA President Barbara McAneny, MD. . . [Full text]

American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, American Academy of Neurology

Canadian Blood Services releases first set of national guidelines for organ donation after medical assistance in dying

The Globe and Mail

Kelly Grant

In the last moments before Bob Blackwood died, the doctor paused and, in front of a hushed crowd of operating-room staff, thanked Mr. Blackwood for the gift he was about to give.

It was the summer of 2017 and Mr. Blackwood, a 63-year-old former lawyer with a rare and excruciating neurological disorder, was about to become the first patient in Quebec’s eastern townships to donate his organs after receiving a medically assisted death.

“[The doctor] said he hoped that this was something they’ll be able to do more in the future to help save lives,” said Heather Ross, Mr. Blackwood’s widow. “It was just lovely how he put it.” . . . [Full text]

The caricature of the conscientiously objecting physician

Objecting doctors are the bad guys, obstructing care.

How will disciplining conscientious doctors or driving them from the profession improve health care?

Physicians’ Alliance Against Euthanasia

Catherine Ferrier

Weary physicianCanadian doctors who object to directly causing the death of their patients, once the near-totality of the profession, have since the enactment of laws permitting “medical assistance in dying” suddenly become outliers. Polling data is unclear, polls are often biased, and there is no doubt that the euthanasia lobby had the ear of media, opinion leaders and politicians long before we knew what they were up to. Be that as it may, we are now told that euthanasia/MAiD is an accepted ‘medical treatment’ that must be provided to those who request it. Many provincial medical colleges, though not requiring doctors to euthanize patients themselves, do expect, to different degrees, that we facilitate their being euthanized by someone else. . . [Full text]

Canada’s bishops allow Catholic hospitals to host consultations for euthanasia

LifeSite News

Lianne Laurence

OTTAWA, April 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s bishops were consulted on and agreed to secret guidelines by Catholic health sponsors that allow third-party euthanasia assessments of medically frail patients in Catholic health care facilities, LifeSiteNews has learned.

And while the Catholic health sponsors who drafted the guidelines in collaboration with ethicists and bishops concluded such assessments were not formal cooperation with evil, they failed to consider there are instances when material cooperation is gravely wrong, as is the case here, says Catholic moral theologian, Dr. E. Christian Brugger. . . [Full text]