Death by Prescription. Pt 4.

      The justices of the Supreme Court of Canada have decided , in their wisdom, that it is a patient's privilege to demand termination of their life, if they feel that there is no other way to relieve them of pain and suffering.   They do not demand or require guidelines. That is someone else's  problem and they do not seem to care who's.

     " No need for suicide legislation: Academics (opine)" screams the headlines from a newspaper that I respect   'It's illogical" says Professor Amir Attaran, Prominent Law Professor at the University of Ottawa.  He goes on to comment,  "We don't legislate to regulate how doctors withdraw life-saving treatment."  Pardon?  That's not how it looked to me when I was practicing medicine.  Indeed, lawyers seem only too eager to challenge decisions that doctors make in good faith.  Increasingly, lawyers are egging patients on to initiate legal proceedings that are very lucrative to over-lawyered communities.
      Lawyers would, of course, like to place all of the responsibility on physicians, many of whom are forced into making decisions that their inclinations and professional ethics find abhorrent.  Many of the lawyers themselves are the reluctant satraps of political masters whose main aim is to satisfy their political masters.
      The Canadian Medical Association, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, The College of  Family Physicians and their ilk want to look good to everyone.  Still, it is difficult  to  understand why organizations like the CMA are not taking a more proactive position on behalf of the physician members who feel a moral commitment to preserve life and find that assisting suicide is contrary to the Hippocratic principles that induced them to become physicians in the first place.  The first step towards rationalizing this is to establish guidelines that receive wide publication and approval both within  the profession and outside it.  Any physician who is  going to  facilitate this new course for medical practice must at least know that it is approved and sanctioned by society generally.
        Even then, physicians who want no part of  this must be respected as long as they make their views known to their patients.  It  is  certainly no part of their duty to refer their patient to a practice that does not meet their concept of moral and proper practice, despite the opinion of Healthcare and Legal administridiots.