Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark decision in allowing physician-assisted suicide in Canada. The Court gave the federal government until April of this year to pass legislation allowing this; the government got an extension to June as it wasn’t...
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End of Life Care
Death doulas
I came across this fascinating article the other day about a new trend call death doulas or death midwives. Essentially, this is a person who helps families navigate through the many and complex decisions that must be made toward the end of a loved one’s life, up...
Abandoning the term “do not resuscitate”
Following up on my post from last week, I read this very interesting article a while ago that I have been wanting to share. In it, the author argues for getting rid of the term “do not resuscitate” and replacing it with “allow natural death” instead. He explains that...
Lessons in end of life care from Joan Rivers
As most people will know, Joan Rivers passed away in early September. She was a pioneer in the comedy world, and a larger-than-life figure. She also took death in stride, regularly making jokes about it in her comedy acts and online. It turns out that she did more...
Stolen body parts
I recently came across this article about a woman in Philadelphia whose son’s body was not properly returned to her. Mary Anderson’s son died of complications from a lung infection, so she authorized an autopsy to determine exactly what he died of. When his body was...
Death and organ donation
At what point do you die? Is it when your heart stops beating? When your brain stops functioning? Some other point? In Canada, there is no consensus on that, and this is starting to affect organ donor levels. If you die in one end of the country, you might be declared...
Dying with dignity
Currently, in Quebec, a bill is making its way toward becoming law. Bill 52 would allow both physician-assisted suicide, where a doctor gives a patient a prescription to allow them to commit suicide, and euthanasia, where the doctor or other caregiver actually ends...
When does life support stop supporting life?
There has been a lot of discussion in the news in recent months over what counts as “life,” between the right-to-die cases moving toward the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as the Rasouli cases and the right to keep a patient on life support when the family’s wishes...
An update on the right to live
I have written before about a case winding its way through the Canadian courts about a patient’s right to live. Hassan Rasouli went into Sunnybrook Hospital for surgery, contracted an infection, and ended up on life support. His wife, who was also his attorney under a...
A bit of resurrection
Vincent Bright was recently sentenced to probation for stealing his father's body out of a Detroit cemetery. The reason he stole the body was his belief that he could resurrect his father through his religious beliefs. He placed his father in his freezer at home; it...