Author Archive

A majority of the members of the Canadian Medical Association have taken position against euthanasia during consultations held during winter and spring. At the same time, they emphasized the inadequacy of palliative care services in Canada.

This was reported by the Association in a report entitled End of Life Care, a National Dialogue, released in July.

The CMA conducted several meetings in different parts of Canada and created a website for members to comment on various end-of-life care issues. Attendance at the ...

Dr. Donald Boudreau and Margaret Somerville: The Incompatibility of Euthanasia with Medicine. “Euthanasia is incompatible with medicine”, state Dr. Donald Boudreau and ethicist Margaret Somerville in a joint article published in July in the Journal Medicolegal and Bioethics.

The two experts from McGill University offer reflections of a multifaceted ethical nature. Here are some in summary:

• Euthanasia contradicts the fundamental role of the physician, which is to heal. This role, they argue, cannot be exercised in a strictly technical sense, as it ...

In the Ottawa Citizen on June 30, Dr. Rene Leiva wrote, “the sense of dignity comes first and foremost from the patient’s loved ones”.

For Dr. Leiva, who works in palliative care and care for the elderly, the ongoing debate on death “with dignity” too often misses the essential point by leading people to believe that dignity at end-of-life sometimes requires euthanasia.

The real answer lies elsewhere, he wrote. “The experience of many, including mine, is that the presence of a loved ...

Euthanasia is a societal issue, not medical, and it is for doctors to kill, writes Dr. Martin Labrie and Dr. Jessica Simon in a letter published in the Calgary Herald on June 20.

Both palliative care physicians, the authors argue that discussions about euthanasia are based on several beliefs, often contradicted by experience, and yet presented as universally accepted facts.

They also say that doctors, who have not been trained to kill, are not currently better equipped than other professionals to ...

Dr. Dominique Garrel, tenured Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal, restores the meaning of words in the debate on euthanasia, in a text published in La Presse, print version, on June 11:

Killing is killing. 

For the proponents of the law on end of life care, these words take the meaning that they want. We heard Mrs Hivon often explain that medical aid in dying fundamentally differs from euthanasia, as the latter is done against an individual’s desire. In a ...

Four Quebec residences, including Maison
Michel Sarrazin (first of its kind in Canada), have so far officially
said they would not practice “medical aid in dying”.

The other three, which consist of the West Island Palliative Care Residence in
Montreal, La Maison Au Diapason in Bromont, and Soli-Can in Lac Saint-Jean Est,
all announced that they will not introduce within their walls medical aid in
dying on request and stressed the incompatibility between this practice ...