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
1 comment:
When I was in architecture school many years ago, one of my professors, Rosaria Hodgdon, had a bit to say about the issue of legislating aesthetics. Her take on it, and I more or less agree, is that it’s impossible. Aesthetic decisions are rooted in values, and values give rise to intentions. Any effort to legislate aesthetics inevitably suffers the same fate as efforts to legislate campaign finance spending limits. People with the intent will find ways to get around the law by finding loopholes. They are driven by their values. And it is highly questionable that all loopholes could be plugged. Professor Hodgdon’s conclusion was that “Problems with the profession can only be solved within the profession.” So if anyone doesn’t like what architects are doing insofar as their aesthetic decision-making is concerned, it is foolish to try to legislate the problem away. That approach is doomed to failure. Architects with intention, driven by their values, will always find a way to make their buildings ugly.
With the issue of euthanasia/ assisted suicide, a similar conclusion could be made. While turning the death laws around through judicial action and legislative lobbying is absolutely essential, even without these death laws, the values that doctors hold can wreak havoc in the profession, because some doctors are likely to succumb to the ideology of radical autonomy. And what happens in the ICU stays in the ICU.
In Oregon, where I live, the Death With Dignity Act was put in place by doctors. The husband of the Governor at the time was a doctor, and he was a strong advocate of assisted suicide. I happen to like that Governor a lot, Barbara Roberts (but not so much her husband!). The Oregon Medical Board (a bunch of doctors) were split on the issue and decided to maintain a neutral position. Oregon voters saw that doctors were split. So, being open-minded, they decided to give assisted suicide a chance. If it wasn’t for doctors being split, the voters would have voted against assisted suicide.
The medical profession needs to exert pressure and influence on itself. There should be no attitude of collegial tolerance or respect for differences of opinion. And there should be no accommodations made for the ideology of radical autonomy in medical schools. Doctors opposed to the ideology need to get in the faces of doctors who are under the influence of it. Doctors must express their disgust openly. It’s a dark and evil ideology, and it is undermining civil society and civilization itself. — Thomas Lester
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