Tag Archives: euthanasia

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TH - PHSPTrevor Hancock is a professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s

 

When Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the law prohibiting the provision of assistance to someone committing suicide in February last year, I wrote a column welcoming this ruling. That led to an invitation to address the Annual Conference of the BC Palliative Care and Hospice Association in May 2015 on the topic of  ‘healthy death’.

More recently, I have collaborated with Dr. Douglas McGregor, Medical Director of the Victoria Hospice, in conversations with hospice staff and volunteers from Victoria and across Vancouver Island. Our topic was physician-assisted death (PAD) and the dilemmas this poses for the people who work in hospice and palliative care.

I am very clear that a ‘healthy death’ is one that enables someone to have control over their way of death. ...continue reading →

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Dr. Rene Leiva is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Family Medicine of the University of Ottawa. Part of his work includes in-patient Palliative Care and Care of the Elderly at Bruyere Continuing Care in Ottawa, ON

 

I read with interest the CMAJ Editor in Chief’s latest about protecting the right of physicians to conscientiously object to being party to physician hastened death. Principled medicine has dealt with suffering since Hippocratic tenets were first formulated about 2400 years ago. It is only in the last fifty years that causing death has been construed as ‘medical treatment’ for suffering, which I firmly believe to be erroneous. I’m disturbed to see that while Quebec is leading the country on euthanasia only a fraction of its population has access to palliative care. Palliative Care has been around for close to forty years, but Quebec's new law on ‘medical aid in dying’ expects to make that option available to 100 per cent of Quebecers in a matter of months. ...continue reading →

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is a veterinarian and researcher in the Department of Pathobiology at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario

 

 

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on February 26, 2015, in .

The recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling on assisted death has opened the door for legislation and sparked dialogue about what assisted dying should look like in this country. As we grapple with these difficult questions surrounding assisted death, it may be pertinent to consult those in our society with considerable experience: veterinarians are frequently asked to euthanize their patients. ...continue reading →