Landry Joshua T, Foreman Thomas, Kekewich Michael
The Champlain Centre for Health Care Ethics, The Ottawa Hospital, 1053 Carling Avenue, Rm A117, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1Y 4E9.
The Champlain Centre for Health Care Ethics, The Ottawa Hospital, 1053 Carling Avenue, Rm A117, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1Y 4E9; The Ottawa Hospital, 1053 Carling Avenue, Rm A117, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1Y 4E9.
Health Policy. 2015 Nov;119(11):1490-8. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2015.10.002. Epub 2015 Oct 22.
On February 6th 2015 the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) released their decision on Carter v Canada (Attorney General) to uphold a judgment from a lower court which determined that the current prohibition in Canada on physician-assisted dying violated the s. 7 [Charter of Rights and Freedoms] rights of competent adults whose medical condition causes intolerable suffering. The purpose of this piece is to briefly examine current regulations from Oregon (USA), Belgium, and the Netherlands, in which physician-assisted death and/or euthanasia is currently permitted, as well as from the province of Quebec which recently passed Bill-52, "An Act Respecting End-of-Life Care." We present ethical considerations that would be pertinent in the development of policies and regulations across Canada in light of this SCC decision: patient and provider autonomy, determining a relevant decision-making standard for practice, and explicating challenges with the SCC criteria for assisted-death eligibility with special consideration to the provision of assisted-death, and review of assisted-death cases. [It is not the goal of this paper to address all questions related to the regulation and policy development of euthanasia and assisted death in Canada, but rather to stimulate and guide the conversations in these areas for policy makers, professional bodies, and regulators.].
2015年2月6日，加拿大最高法院（SCC）公布了其对卡特诉加拿大（总检察长）案的判决，维持了下级法院的一项判决，该判决认定加拿大目前对医生协助死亡的禁令侵犯了患有导致无法忍受痛苦的医疗状况的有行为能力成年人的第7条[《权利和自由宪章》]权利。本文的目的是简要审视美国俄勒冈州、比利时和荷兰目前允许医生协助死亡和/或安乐死的现行法规，以及最近通过了第52号法案“临终关怀法”的魁北克省的法规。鉴于加拿大最高法院的这一判决，我们提出在加拿大制定政策和法规时相关的伦理考量：患者和提供者的自主权、确定相关的实践决策标准、特别考虑到协助死亡的提供以及对协助死亡案件的审查，阐述加拿大最高法院协助死亡资格标准所面临的挑战。[本文的目的不是解决与加拿大安乐死和协助死亡的监管及政策制定相关的所有问题，而是激发并引导政策制定者、专业团体和监管机构在这些领域的讨论。]
