- © 2008 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
The recent CMAJ editorial about the problems associated with ending life support against the wishes of the patient's family was a pleasure to read.1 However, a few key issues were not addressed.
First, Samuel Golubchuk was an orthodox Jew; his faith underlies all of his family's demands. For an observant Jew, extraordinary treatment is not a choice but is an obligation. This obligation to maintain life was the basis for similar suits brought against the Jewish General Hospital in Montréal, Quebec, by the family of a man known as Otto G. and the family of Herman Krausz. It is not unique to Judaism; the family of Terri Schiavo in the United States found justification in their Christian faith to make similar demands. Second, the editorial did not mention that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of religion and did not discuss the implications of this protection in such cases.
Third, the fact that our single-provider health care system has limited resources is another key issue that was not discussed in the editorial. Indeed, in all the legal cases I have mentioned, the “unpluggers” evoked resource allocation more often than the best interests of the dying. The editorialists should have noted that in countries where private health care is legal, families have the option of paying for extra treatment.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.
REFERENCE
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