As of midnight next Tuesday, June 6th, Canadian physicians will be legally free to kill patients who chose to die. The fact that this contravenes the oldest ethic of medicine since the time of Hippocrates, does not seem to interest the imperious legal autocrats one iota. The urgency in the ranks of the liberal government to pass this legislation (bill C14) is only explicable on political terms and certainly not in terms of patient welfare.
The President of the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada, an organization I hadn't heard of until now, said,
"Our concern is that if physicians are unclear, the natural default will be to be hesitant to act, hesitant to deliver the service, and suffering patients won't be able to avail themselves of a service that is legally theirs to pursue."
I found it difficult to understand Dr. Grant's concern about physicians being hesitant to deliver the death blow, from which there is no reversal, until I looked him up, to find he has a law degree, as well as being a physician.
The Canadian Medical Protective Association expects to involve its lawyers to help doctors determine a person's eligibility for termination, which it has euphemistically termed 'MAID' (medical aid in dying). Cute,eh?
As I have stated before, if the public has determined that it wants euthanasia, it should be available. It would take only a few months to train a corps of 'terminators' and if some physicians see fit to volunteer for the job, that's fine. However, we will rue the day if killing patients will ever become part of the the job description of a physician.
Mainly events that occur in and around the medical world. Some you need to know about and some you don't. All to either inform or amuse you.
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