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Supreme Court of Canada rules that medical doctors in Ontario cannot unilaterally cut off the life support system of a hospitalized patient
20 October 2013
(CRC)—In a 5-2 majority ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada denied doctors the decision to unilaterally withdraw a patient’s life support system. The Globe&Mail’s Justice reporter Sean Fine reported that the Rasouli case has been fraught, with ethicists on all sides saying that the power over life-and-death in an aging society has wide implications for the medical system, including the allocation of scarce resources. But the Globe journalist also reported that the Supreme Court majority was careful to say their analysis is based on their interpretation of Ontario’s 1996 Health Care Consent Act, and not on who should trump whom in provinces that do not have dispute-resolution tribunals for end-of-life care. The public’s interest in funding treatment of little or no value did not play into their decision, the Globe&Mail reports the Court as saying. The Supreme Court judgment can be consulted on the web Cuthbertson v. Rasouli, 2013 SCC 53. The Judgment for the majority was delivered by the Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin who argued that: [71] "A final argument raised by the physicians is that they may be placed in an untenable ethical situation if consent is required for withdrawal of life support. They could effectively be compelled to continue providing life support, even where they consider it to provide no medical benefit to, or even to harm, the patient. This could place physicians in breach of their legal and professional obligations to act in the best interests of the patient. [72] "Legally, a physician cannot be faulted for following the direction of the Board, any more than he could be faulted for abiding by a judge’s direction at common law not to withdraw life support. Implicit in the physicians’ request that a judge resolve the present dispute is acceptance that if a judge orders that life support cannot be withdrawn, they must comply. Their legal position under the HCCA is no different. [73] "However, a physician may feel that his legal obligation not to withdraw life support is in tension with his professional or personal ethics. Such tensions are inherent to medical practice. Indeed, the law of consent to medical treatment evolved through cases in which the patient did not wish to be treated, but the physician felt a professional obligation to treat: see Malette, at p. 420; Fleming, at pp. 85-86. The law is now clear that treatment cannot be administered without consent, irrespective of the ethical imperative that physicians may feel. Similarly, a physician’s duty of care may require that treatment not be withdrawn despite the physician’s ethical objections to its administration: see R. (Burke) v. General Medical Council, [2005] EWCA Civ 1003, [2005] 3 W.L.R. 1132, at para. 34. If the present case were resolved as my colleague Justice Karakatsanis proposes, the physicians may still be required not to withdraw life support based on their common law or fiduciary duties. Their ethical position under the HCCA is no different." Dr. Leo Alexander has been proven right Both the LaRouche Political Action Committee in the United States and the Committee for the Republic of Canada in this country have, over the years, reprinted the prescient warnings of Doctor Leo Alexander who was the chief medical advisor to the United States chief counsel for war crimes in the Nuremberg tribunals. Dr. Alexander wrote the following in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1949 : "Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, and finally all non-Aryans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedge-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude towards the non-rehabilitable sick. "It is, therefore, this subtle shift in emphasis of the physicians’ attitude that one must thoroughly investigate...." Today, in the United States, Obamacare is implementing the British model of the Liverpool Care Pathway which itself is modelled on the T4 euthanasia directives of Hitler in 1939. In Canada, this imperial genocide policy has now been introduced in Quebec’s National Assembly as Bill 52, an Act respecting end-of-life care. In 1945, people around the world were horrified when shown newsreels of the Nazi concentration camps; people raised their voices as one to proclaim Never Again ! Did it take only 3 generations to bring about collective amnesia? Less than 70 years for North Americans to forsake their pledge to fight such Nazi policies wherever it arose again? We at the Committee for the Republic of Canada will not let the City of London and Wall Street bankers revive the policy of lives not worth living, policies dictated in 2013 to the Obama regime and other comprador government figures, by that same murderous Anglo-Dutch Empire that created and backed the Hitler regime! We invite the population to join our forces to stop these policies while it were still possible. [GG] |