Supreme Court allows doctor-assisted suicide in specific cases

[escapefromstress]

People with grievous and irremediable medical conditions should have the right to ask a doctor to help them die, Canada's highest court says in a unanimous ruling.

The Supreme Court of Canada says a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help a person commit suicide should be amended to allow doctors to help in specific situations.

The ruling only applies to competent adults with enduring, intolerable suffering who clearly consent to ending their lives.

The court has given federal and provincial governments 12 months to craft legislation to respond to the ruling; the ban on doctor-assisted suicide stands until then. If the government doesn't write a new law, the court's exemption for physicians will stand.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-allows-doctor-assisted-suicide-in-specific-cases-1.2947487

 

[vancity_cowboy]

Look at what happened with #c36 and the conservative government, and now this. I applaud both decisions of the SCOC, however with Harper at the helm, it doesn't look good!

i agree... i can't wait to see this one :doh:

 

[Justin Beaver]

Look at what happened with #c36 and the conservative government, and now this. I applaud both decisions of the SCOC, however with Harper at the helm, it doesn't look good!

Yep,they'll probably find a way to make it even harder to end your own suffering,probably involving criminalizing doctors and/or family members involved.

 

[Lo-ki]

Well, it's a step in the right direction.

Very small baby steps.,

 

[newatit]

I agree with the pessimistic side. Harper and McKay will mess this up too. It seems to have already started. Colorado has rejected this item.

 

[bcneil]

When you have religious Zealots in power they don't always make the best choices, voters need to get off their butts!

Just remind them that their hero jesus also committed suicide

 

[escapefromstress]

How to end a life? Canada can look abroad for guidance as it seeks best method for assisted suicide

Family doctor David Grube helped end the lives of about 30 patients while caring for the people of Philomath, Oregon. There’s no gasping, the rural doctor says of the patients as they pass. “There’s no moaning or groaning,’’ he says. ‘‘The person might say a few goodbyes, or thank-you’s, and then just falls asleep.”

For those deaths, Grube either wrote a prescription for a lethal overdose of drugs, or acted as a consulting doctor in their suicides. He and other proponents believe state-sanctioned, doctor-assisted dying offers people suffering intolerably a more gentle exit. But death does not always come easily. Patients have regurgitated the lethal drugs, or “re-awakened” after swallowing them. In some cases, the time between “ingestion” and “expiry” has taken far longer than anticipated.

Now, as Canada braces for legalized assisted dying, the nation’s medical leaders are looking for clarity for doctors prepared to perform this most difficult task: what is the most humane way to take a life?

Some say the method physicians find most distasteful — death by lethal injection — may offer a safer, faster and more certain death. But doctors say the idea of actively putting patients to death by their own needle is antithetical to everything they were trained to do. Others who have delivered a lethal injection say it is not about stopping a heart beating, but about euthanizing suffering.

“When I’ve done it, I’ve never felt like I was killing someone, that’s why I don’t like the world ‘killed,’” Dr. Rob Jonquiere, former chief executive officer of the Dutch Right to Die Society, says in an interview from his home in Amsterdam. “I always saw it, and most of my colleagues will see it, as terminating the suffering of a patient.”

Leaders of the Canadian Medical Association are turning to European and U.S. jurisdictions that have legalized doctor-hastened death as they begin to wrap their minds around the sheer practicalities and technical aspects. “Doctors who are going to participate in this are going to want to know, ‘What drugs do I use, at what doses? How do I administer,’” says Dr. Jeff Blackmer, the CMA’s director of ethics and professional affairs.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/life+Canada+look+abroad+guidance+seeks+best+method/10961189/story.html

 

[manni]

it's about time.