EUTHANASIA CREEPING INTO CANADA

LANTZ, NS, Nov 17 (LSN)  On Saturday the Globe and Mail detailed another confrontation between doctors and a patient’s family over the placing of a do-not-resuscitate order (DNR) on a patient’s chart. Suzanne and Ian Perryof Lantz, N.S., were told that the Izaak Walton Killam-Grace Hospital for Children, Women and Families hospital (Halifax) made a unilateral decision to place a DNR order on their seven-year-old son Jay’s chart. The order was issued when Jay, who has childhood cancer, experienced a serious medical problem.  After the trouble had been alleviated, however, the order remained until Mrs. Perry demanded its removal several weeks later.  The Globe explained that the confusion in the Canadian system stems from the absence of clear guidelines as regards substitute consent to medical treatment. A policy drafted in 1995 by Canadian medical, health and nurses associations after 6 years of study is also confusing and has led to the regulations varying from one hospital to the next. If such confusion truly exists, however, pro-lifers argue that most Canadians would expect hospitals to err on the side of consulting with family members.  Pro-life legal experts are most concerned with one section in the Joint Statement on Resuscitative Interventions that says that “there is no obligation to offer a person futile or non-beneficial treatment.” One definition of futility used in this context,  the Globe explains, suggests that “It may be seen as useless or even worse—harmful —to save someone’s life if that person would have to live attached to a respirator or in a vegetative state.” Pro-lifers warn that “treatment” may soon be defined, as it has been in other countries including the US, as including food and water. Thus patients could be subject to the cruel and unusual punishment of starvation till death—even against the wishes of family members.