Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: a collective or an individual Choice?

EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE: AN INDIVIDUAL OR A COLLECTIVE CHOICE?

Such was the topic of the debate that took place in Montreal on Friday, the 7^th of April, at the Science faculty of the Université du Québec à Montréal, the UQàM, to celebrate the UN-sponsored International Day of Health.

Mme Francine Lalonde, MP for the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa and author of bill C-407 which died on the order table last November, when parliament was dissolved and elections were called, was assisted by a panel of professors from the three francophone universities in Quebec: Laval University, the University of Montreal and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

PANEL DISCUSSION

Madame Lalonde re-iterated her intention to re-introduce her Private Member’s bill, sooner rather than later, in the present session of Parliament. Her opinion on the issue seems to have remained basically the same. Since active euthanasia is already being performed on a growing number of patients, the practice should be regulated by law. Palliative care can only be a complementary solution, at best. People should have the right to die with dignity when certain conditions are met.

Prof. Hubert Marcoux, MD, MA, FCMF, of the Department of Family Medicine at Laval University and also Head of the Geriatric Department of the Jeffrey Hale Hospital in Quebec provided some statistics of decriminalized euthanasia and assisted suicide practice in Holland, Belgium and Switzerland followed by a somewhat philosophical analysis of the consequences of moral and physical suffering for the patient, his family and society.

Prof. Patrick Vinay, MD, PhD., Professor at the Department of Medicine and medical specialties at the University of Montreal and medical practitioner at the palliative care unit of Notre Dame Hospital, stressed the need for more and better palliative care in order to enable patients to live their life plainly to the end, even while dying. He mentioned a sleep treatment he has developed for his terminal patients which eventually allows them to come to terms with their condition thereby improving their quality of life.

Prof. Brian Mishara, PhD., Professor at the Department of Psychology at UQàM and Director of the Suicide and Euthanasia Research and Intervention Center (CRISE), was the only one on the panel who openly criticized Mme Lalonde’s bill, on its formulation, first, by expressing serious reservations on the "apparently lucid" - clause in the bill as one of the conditions in which a patient could express his desire to die. Secondly, by stating that, contrary to Holland and Belgium, Mme Lalonde’s bill would allow a third person to participate in the execution of the ‘apparently’ lucid patient’s desire and finally, by mentioning that no decent palliative care is available in Canada, yet. He also said that suicide is legal in Canada as well as is refusal to undergo medical treatment and the possibility to legally administer drugs which have the double effect of killing the patient in the process. During question period, Prof. Mishara was severely reprimanded by one of the intervenors for using the term ‘killing’ in the execution of a patient through euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Two more interventions came from Mme Renée Joyal, LL.D., a lawyer and a political science and law instructor at UQàM and from anthropologist Luce Desaulnier, Professor at the Department of social and public communications of UQàM and expert in end-of-life issues, the whole having been moderated by well-known Quebec journalist Ariane Émond. Mme Renée Joyal clearly expressed her fear that the right-to-die could eventually become the duty-to- die. Therefore, all should be done to prevent trivialization of the right-to-life, of the right to liberty and dignity. Referring to the interventions of Dr Vinay and Prof. Mishara, she stressed that the quest for a new humanism had become necessary.

Anthropologist Luce Desaulnier’s intervention was a very academic expression of materialistic determinism and an, at times, economic approach of the problem in the sense that when, for instance, not enough palliative care is available at any given time, the law of supply and demand would inevitably call for more drastic solutions especially in a context dealing with shortages of nurses and medical practitioners.

QUESTION PERIOD

Revealed the mitigated and sometimes confused opinions of the somewhat 200 courageous participants who showed up for this Friday night debate in cold and rainy Montreal. A forceful and convincing intervention was made by Mme St-Amour, Professor of Ethics at the University of Montreal, exhorting the panelists and the public to think twice before walking down that slippery slope.

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   Guido De Volder,

   Montreal, April 2006.