Euthanasia in Canada, Supreme Court Ruled this Morning

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" That needs clarity." K.

I agree but intuition suggests clarity may not come empirically. Cultural anthropology will suggest that enduring indigenous culture has in all times and places come to terms with death by natural and spiritual means. We will be wise to go cautious and slow with the manufacture and consumption, for profit, of artificial means to address limiting circumstance of mind and body. He said as the manufacture and consumption of artificial means rolls relentless into the fragile the future.

One of the most dehumanizing aspects of chronic or terminal illness is the constant and unequivocal bureaucratic demand which increasingly defines the emergent medical institutions. While all around lawyers hover eager to take advantage of disease and death.

George
 
Problem is, George et al, I keep it coming back to poor old Don Low's death.

It could have been easy-ish, or at least easier. It was really, really f***ing hard, and WE MADE IT SO. Who do we think we are to play this kind of judge over someone else's life.
 
GeoFee said:
" That needs clarity." K.

I agree but intuition suggests clarity may not come empirically. Cultural anthropology will suggest that enduring indigenous culture has in all times and places come to terms with death by natural and spiritual means. We will be wise to go cautious and slow with the manufacture and consumption, for profit, of artificial means to address limiting circumstance of mind and body. He said as the manufacture and consumption of artificial means rolls relentless into the fragile the future.

One of the most dehumanizing aspects of chronic or terminal illness is the constant and unequivocal bureaucratic demand which increasingly defines the emergent medical institutions. While all around lawyers hover eager to take advantage of disease and death.

George
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We agree. I think though that we need other social sciences concerned with the same problem to weigh in more in this to get it heard aka disability studies speaking for the people most at risk and as the people most at risk.
 
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BetteTheRed said:
Problem is, George et al, I keep it coming back to poor old Don Low's death.

It could have been easy-ish, or at least easier. It was really, really f***ing hard, and WE MADE IT SO. Who do we think we are to play this kind of judge over someone else's life.
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Their ought to be way to give Dr. Low dignity and make really good and sure that absolutely no one slips through the cracks and dies because their socioeconomic suffering was not part of how medicine views or treats the 'diagnosis'. Dr. Low suffered more than he needed to but his end did come. Just as worrying is for people to die who could've lived and been helped by factors other than medicine.
 
revjohn said:

That would fly directly in the face of what was upheld in the recent ruling of the Supreme Court in Canada. Particularly the following:



Which basically means that everyone involved in the hearing agreed with the trial judge that the object of the prohibition was to protect vulnerable persons. The ruling offered by the Supreme Court of Canada does not eliminate that protection. The ruling offered by the Supreme Court of Canada addresses the overbreadth on the grounds that an absolute prohibition against Physician Assisted Death imposes unnecessary pain and suffering on certain individuals who do not meet the threshold for being considered vulnerable individuals.

What is missing, at this point, from a legislative perspective would be the rubric used to separate individuals from those who are considered vulnerable and those who will not be considered vulnerable. The Supreme Court of Canada made it very clear that it is the purview of Parliament and the various Provincial Legislatures to craft the legislation which will be used to make that determination.

It is also important to note that the declaration made by the Supreme Court of Canada is suspended for a 12 month period. Meaning that functionally, nothing changed between the date of the ruling and any date prior to a year from the ruling. The absolute prohibition is still in play and will be for roughly the next year.

That is the time the Government of Canada and the various Provincial and Territorial Legislatures will have to address the issue.

I would offer the following counsel to any and all who feel strongly about the declaration made with respect to Physician Assisted Death. Contact your MP, MPP/MLA/MHA with your concerns ASAP. As this is an election year you should do so sooner rather than later.

Time invested attempting to change points of view in this particular forum will not move our politicians one way or another.
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Vulnerable and not vulnerable - that is an issue. There are many issues including viewing disability as impairment - medical model and government definitions of disability - built into the system that will decide on and regulate assisted suicides that make PWDs vulnerable to exploitation ( as opposed to pitiable).
 
I'd like to comment that EVERYONE here has a strong opinion on this and nobody seems any less settled on their view than I do. So everyone here with an opposite pov to me has been just as stubborn and unwilling to listen to mine and few have aknowledged that it's not just my point of view - it's the view of some very credible rights groups that have been around for a long time (not just ad hoc thrown together groups). I'm the only one it appears who's taking their side (more or less - I support LAS in later stage terminal illness but that's it - some rights groups are against LAS completely). And it's not because I want to control their life but it's because I don't want people to harm themselves if they can in any way be helped or for anyone to slip through the cracks and I am being cautious and scrutinizing in pointing out potential cracks. I don't think it's something to just brush off. Call me sick, out of my gourde whatever.
 
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For someone who said something to the effect of "who cares what the rights groups say - anyone can form a group" the Canadian Association for Community Living - large, well known, respected, active for nearly sixty years and has over 40,000 members. They oppose LAS.

http://www.cacl.ca/about-us/history

The Council of Canadians with disabilities has been around since 1976 and is comprised of integral and respected member organizations across the country in every province actively involved in human rights, anti-poverty and Accessibilty and for people with all disabilities. None of these are ad hoc little disability specific community groups - CCD was involved right up to representing Canada at the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. They are prominent and respected for all the advocacy they have done to advance the lives of PWDs. CCD was opposed to LAS. To just write them off or say their points are illogical and I am illogical for having similar concerns is really quite offensive. The way people have spoken to me is offensive. I don't expect anyone will apologize it's not something that generally happens at WC.

http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/about/members
 
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Kimmio said:
There are many issues including viewing disability as impairment
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At present, the current prohibition which is absolute views disability as one of the areas which renders persons vulnerable to inducement.

Where do you see evidence that Governments in general are attempting to back away from that position?

The Supreme Court of Canada, indeed all of the appelants and and all of the intervenors in the case also recognized that any prohibition which recognizes vulnerabilities which may make individuals prone to inducement to commit suicide is a moral necessity.

Where do you see evidence in the ruling that anyone is actually advancing a contrary position?

What has been at the centre of the decision is the fact that the blanket prohibition forces individuals in pain which cannot be mitigated against to continue to live lives of pain until their illnesses run their terminal course.

Where do you see the evidence that anyone desires to transform the ban on physician assisted death into Eugenics for beginners?
 
@revjohn
Impairments that cause mental suffering do make a person vulnerable to be induced by their socioeconomic or personal circumstances to commit suicide - or else there wouldn't be so many suicides - so I don't even know how the ruling on mental suffering got by in the first place. Doctors should not be able to give that option to a depressed patient. But combined with that concern is the interaction between the impairment and the disabling effects of the socioeconomic environment - which, from a disease perspective, a physician would not be obligated to look at.

A chilling look at Belgium (although some might find it just great) that gives some indication of the slippery slope we're on by not stipulating terminal illness. There's another problem. Basically all disabilities are chronic irremediable illness or conditions - and the doctor's lenience or full scope of understanding or not about his patient's report of 'intolerable' - where's the line drawn?

Belgium (a PBS special):

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-belgium-inside-worlds-liberal-euthanasia-laws-2/
 
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Kimmio said:
@revjohn
Impairments that cause mental suffering do make a person vulnerable to be induced by their socioeconomic or personal circumstances to commit suicide - or else there wouldn't be so many suicides - so I don't even know how the ruling on mental suffering got by in the first place. Doctors should not be able to give that option to a depressed patient. But combined with that concern is the interaction between the impairment and the disabling effects of the socioeconomic environment - which, from a disease perspective, a physician would not be obligated to look at.

A chilling look at Belgium (although some might find it just great) that gives some indication of the slippery slope we're on by not stipulating terminal illness. There's another problem. Basically all disabilities are chronic irremediable illness or conditions - and the doctor's lenience or full scope of understanding or not about his patient's report of 'intolerable' - where's the line drawn?

Belgium (a PBS special):

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-belgium-inside-worlds-liberal-euthanasia-laws-2/
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Be warned...this is disturbing and what we want to prevent. There needs to be safeguards to insure assisted suicide it is only available for terminally ill patients. This is not a just decision and I hope no doctors are ever that lenient in Canada and instead we help people not to suffer while they are alive and to lead full lives.
 
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Kimmio said:
Be warned...this is disturbing and what we want to prevent. There needs to be safeguards to insure assisted suicide it is only available for terminally ill patients. This is not a just decision and I hope no doctors are ever that lenient in Canada and instead we help people not to suffer while they are alive and to lead full lives.
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I do agree that extreme mental suffering surprised me as being included by theSupreme Court. And i think it will be much trickier to craft a law to handle this. A terminal illness or even extreme pain are much easier to quantify than mental pain
 
And to put an exclamation mark on the ruling, the court awarded special costs against the government of Canada for the entire five-year course of the litigation, less 10 per cent to be paid by the government of British Columbia.

The court suspended its judgment for 12 months, during which the current law continues to apply, placing enormous pressure on Parliament to act in what is an election year.

At least six reform bills on right-to-die issues have been defeated over the past two decades and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper insisted last fall that it would not support changing the status quo.

The political toxicity of the issue was immediately apparent Friday: Not a single MP asked the government a question about the decision during question period, despite the presence of Justice Minister Peter MacKay in the House.
 
Hermann said:
My analyst told me,
I am right out of my head.
My analyst told me
I would be better off dead.

-Joni Mitchell
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Is this escapism from a world created by gods of passion without any other clues? Perhaps they should have associated with Elisha on that one as an alternate spirit ... albeit of a abstract hue ... the things that come to yah when an adept at words.

Do any of you know the various forms of adept and it's meaning ... sort of like a hue of speculum!
 
Kimmio said:
Impairments that cause mental suffering do make a person vulnerable to be induced by their socioeconomic or personal circumstances to commit suicide - or else there wouldn't be so many suicides
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Which nobody is arguing is not true. It is precisely this truth which establishes the criteria of "vulnerable" and it is precisely that criteria which the Supreme Court Decision left intact. What the Supreme Court of Canada ruled was that the blanket prohibition does not adequately address the good of all and in certain instances the blanket prohibition could be considered cruel in that it demands individuals suffering pain to continue to suffer that pain without redress.

What will be required in the new legislation which the Supreme Court of Canada has asked the Federal and Provincial Governments to enact is the means by which any applicant requesting Physician Assisted Death proves that they are not vulnerable and indeed are capable of making such a decision.

Physicians not wishing to be held criminally culpable for homocide will have to demonstrate that patients they have assisted were, in fact, capable and should not be included in the vulnerable population which the prohibition protects.

Again, I see nothing in the ruling which declares open season on individuals with disabilites be they physical, or emotional. I see nothing in the ruling which declares socioeconomic status is an acceptable yardstick in determining who should or shouldn't be permitted to seek Physician Assisted Death. I do not see anything in the declaration that the Supreme Court has made that indicates the courts are signalling the Government or Physicians to engage in Eugenics and determine who is fit to live and who must be counselled to die.

I see nothing like that in what was actually part of the declaration.

I suppose I am not surprised that some people would feel that is exactly what is at stake. I see nothing in the declaration which validates those feelings. In fact, from what I read in the declaration I see much which suggests that the Supreme Court of Canada would reject any forthcoming legislation which does not protect those who are vulnerable and who did benefit from the the absolute prohibition.

And that isn't because I lack imagination or disregard disability of any kind. It is because I read the ruling and noted what the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed (that the vulnerable need protection) and what the Supreme Court of Canada rejected (that a blanket prohibition delivers justice to all persons). The Supreme Court of Canada rendered a decision which respects nuance and seeks legislation which also respects the nuance rather than legislation which callously prohibits individuals in pain from seeking remedy for that pain.
 
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