Quebec doctors urge colleagues to battle euthanasia

A group of Quebec doctors has urged the province's professional order to reconsider its proposal to tolerate assisted suicide in "appropriate circumstances."

A brief, endorsed by about 100 doctors and submitted to Quebec's College of Physicians in August, urges fellow physicians to voice their disagreement with euthanasia. It comes as a private member's right-to-die bill that would decriminalize euthanasia advances to second reading at the House of Commons later this fall.

The brief's authors insist there are no special circumstances justifying euthanasia, given advances in pain management, geriatric and palliative care.

"There is a thought that people are being kept alive in an awful way against their will, and that there is a propensity of the medical profession to just keep on treatment that patients don't want," said André Bourque, head of family medicine at the University of Montreal. "I think this is really untrue."

Decriminalizing euthanasia is a dangerous path, Bourque added, because it fundamentally changes a doctor's role in patient treatment.

"To give the right to die to the patient, you must give a right to kill to the physician," he said. "A physician is there to support, to comfort, to treat, to heal. The minute you give him the right to kill, you have changed something in the patient-doctor relationship."

Bourque and other signatories say they hope their brief will spur more doctors to speak out about their position on the subject.

Bloc Québécois MP Francine Lalonde tabled her private member's right-to-die bill (Bill C-384) in May 2009. It proposes making euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide legal.