Dear colleagues and friends,
You probably heard on Saturday, September 7 that as of October 30, Quebec will allow medical assistance in dying by advance request for people diagnosed with an illness leading to incapacity.
The fear of living with a neurocognitive disorder, in a health care system that is already failing to address the needs of seniors, has brought Quebec to the point where people’s lives will be ended without their requesting it and without their consent. Advance consent to MAiD at the time of diagnosis has very little in common with the free and informed consent that medical ethics requires.
Consent, the pillar of the campaign for MAiD ten years ago, is being flouted in the case of our most vulnerable citizens, seniors with impaired cognition. They should not be euthanized when they are most in need of protection. There is so much that can be done to allow them a dignified and happy end of life; what we lack are the resources to do it.
Which doctors will advise a patient newly diagnosed with neurocognitive disorder to advance their death, pretending that they can foresee their future and know what they will want?
Which doctors will lethally inject patients who can neither request nor refuse it, because of a document they signed years earlier, driven by fear and with who knows what degree of understanding?
We will not. We can do better.
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The media coverage of the news is largely ignoring the voices of prudence, just as the National Assembly ignored them when the law was adopted last year.
Here are two exceptions: Dr. Félix Pageau, geriatrician, and Nicole Poirier, founder and director of Maison Carpe Diem in Trois-Rivières.
Please make your voice heard, by articles and letters to media, and in your professional environment.
Feel free to write to us if you need ideas or help.
Sincerely,
Catherine Ferrier, MD