Tag: Canadian Medical Association

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario decided results of consultation before it started

College decided that physicians must refer for euthanasia/assisted suicide at least a month before consultation began

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) decided by the first week of November, 2015, that it will force Ontario physicians who refuse to kill patients or help them commit suicide to find someone willing to do so.  The decision was made a month before the College began a public consultation purporting to solicit input on that and other questions related to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The decision was revealed in the Report of the Federal External Panel consultations on euthanasia and assisted suicide, released today.

When College representatives appeared before the Panel in Toronto between 2 and 6 November, they told the Panel  “that physicians who object to physician-assisted dying requests have a positive obligation to make an effective referral.”

An effective referral, as described by the Ontario College, is a referral made in good faith to a non-objecting available and accessible physician, other health care professional, or agency. The College noted that the medical community has an obligation to ensure access and that conscientious objection should not create barriers.” (p. 100)

“The Protection of Conscience Project submission was made on 10 January, said Sean Murphy, Project Administrator.

“Two days later, the Canadian Medical Association made an excellent submission rejecting the proposal of  ‘effective referral’,” he added.

“Many people responded in good faith to the College’s invitation to participate in the consultation,” said Murphy.  “But it seems that public consultations about College policy are an expensive and time-consuming charade.”

Last year, College officials wrote the final version of the CPSO policy demanding “effective referral” for morally contested procedures a month before the consultation closed. About 90% of 9,000 submissions on the subject were received after the final version had been written.

Canadian Medical Association Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Consultation on CPSO Interim Guidance on Physician-Assisted Death

Project Introduction

The following submission sets out the position of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) on referral, within the context of the provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide.  The submission concerns a proposed policy by the state regulator of medicine in the province of Ontario, the College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO).  The College proposed that its policy of “effective referral” for morally contested services be applied to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Among the excellent points made by the Association:

It is in fact in a patient’s best interests and in the public interest for physicians to act as moral agents, and not as technicians or service providers devoid of moral judgement. . . . medical regulators ought to be articulating obligations that encourage moral agency, instead of imposing a duty that is essentially punitive to those for whom it is intended and renders an impoverished understanding of conscience.

Full text of the CMA submission

 

Podcast: Amir Attaran and the elves: A law professor makes much ado

Podcast: Amir Attaran and the elves: A law professor makes much adoA response to   “Doctors can’t refuse to help a patient die – no matter what they say”, a column by University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran.  He refers to  the alleged “corrosive hostility” of the Canadian Medical Association to “physician-assisted dying” and its “cowardly and stupid” position on the procedure, including support for physician freedom of conscience. [Full text – Amir Attaran and the elves]

Podcast Contents

Introduction (00 – 01:40)

Attaran: CMA siding with “bigots”  (02:11 –  4:50  )

Attaran: “they cannot refuse”  (05:23 – 06:33)

What Professor Attaran left out  (06:34 – 08:15 )

Professor  Attaran then and now  (08:50 – 09:56)

Law on abortion vs. law on homicide  (09:57 – 11:32)

A difference in perspective  (11:33  – 13:12)

What else Professor Attaran left out  (13:13 – 18:38)

Getting the facts backwards  (19:11 – 20:50 )

Amir Attaran and the elves

 

A law professor makes much ado

Sean Murphy*

In a column in the on-line magazine iPolitics,1 University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran asserts that the “corrosive hostility” of the Canadian Medical Association to “physician-assisted dying” is evident in its “cowardly and stupid” position on the procedure. He claims that the Association “all but threatened” the Supreme Court of Canada that “doctors would rise up” to block it.

In his telling, ever since the Court ignored the threat and struck down the law, the CMA has been acting like a “sore loser,” trying to persuade physicians not to participate. As evidence, he quotes a CMA policy recommendation: “Physicians are not obligated to fulfil requests for assisted dying.” And he complains that the CMA won’t force physicians unwilling to kill patients or help them commit suicide to find someone who will.

Now, the CMA also states that all eligible people should have access to the services without undue delay, and physicians will work with others to ensure access to them,2 but Professor Attaran ignores this. His analysis of CMA policy is simple and scathing. Some physicians, he says, are “bigots,” and the CMA is siding with “those bigots” rather than with patients.

Professor Attaran identifies the bigots: physicians who believe that killing patients or helping them commit suicide is gravely wrong, or at least a bad idea, even in the circumstances defined by the Supreme Court. Those whom Professor Attaran denounces as bigots include physicians who believe they are ethically obliged to compassionately accompany and support dying patients, but not to kill them.

On the contrary, says Professor Attaran, they are “duty-bound” to kill patients or help them commit suicide precisely because the Supreme Court “pointedly” approved “physician-assisted suicide.”*  If physicians won’t help patients commit suicide, he rages, “then who does the CMA think should be obliged to help – elves, maybe?”

To which any number of physicians have already replied, “Not elves, but lawyers.”

[Full text]

[iPolitics version- Doctors aren’t obliged — legally or otherwise — to help people die]

 

A bureaucracy of medical deception

 Quebec physicians told to falsify euthanasia death certificates

Regulators support coverup of euthanasia from families

Sean Murphy*

A bureaucracy of medical deceptionIn the first week of September, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) was reported to be “seeking ‘clarity'” about whether or not physicians who perform euthanasia should misrepresent the medical cause of death, classifying death by lethal injection or infusion as death by natural causes. The question arose because the Quebec College of Physicians was said to be “considering recommending” that Quebec physicians who provide euthanasia should declare the immediate cause of death to be an underlying medical condition, not the administration of the drugs that actually kill the patient.1 In fact, the Collège des médecins du Québec and pharmacy and nursing regulators in the province had already made the decision. In August, the three regulators issued a Practice Guide directing Quebec physicians to falsify death certificates in euthanasia cases.

The physician must write as the immediate cause of death the disease or morbid condition which justified [the medical aid in dying] and caused the death. It is not a question of the manner of death (cardiac arrest), but of the disease, accident or complication that led to the death. The term medical aid in dying should not appear on this document.2

Lawyer Jean Pierre Ménard correctly observed that Quebec’s euthanasia law does not require physicians to report euthanasia on death certificates.1  M. Ménard is an expert on euthanasia law consulted by the Quebec government and the CMA,3  but he seems unaware of guidelines relevant to the classification of deaths and medico-legal death investigations. . . [Full text]