Canada quits world medical body over assisted dying
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has quit the World Medical Association (WMA) over assisted dying and plagiarism.
The WMA has long held that assisted dying is unethical and must be condemned by the medical profession, despite a significant proportion of contemporary doctors believing it to be a valid and ethical option in restricted circumstances.
Assisted dying is lawful in Canada, where it is called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
The CMA has resigned from the WMA, citing a bad case of plagiarism by the current WMA head, but also reporting its considerable displeasure with the WMA's one-sided policy on MAiD.
This is the first example of a member medical society resigning from the WMA in part due to its assisted dying policy, and speaks volumes about medicine's slow but inevitable move to recognise patient well as doctor moral perspectives.
Predictably, Dr Kulvinder Gill (AKA Kulvinder Kaur) from tiny ginger group “Concerned Ontario Doctors”,1 which is strongly opposed to Canada's asssited dying law, slammed the CMA's resignation, claiming that the withdrawal leaves Canada's doctors "without international ethical oversight."
It's shabby framing to impute that Canadian doctors can't practice ethically without some kind of international Big Brother tapping in to their stethoscopes. Perhaps "Concerned Ontario Doctors" believes the Vatican should be monitoring and dictating doctors' conduct?
Predictably too, the Catholic church, with Dr Gill among them, as been actively advancing the right for doctors to ignore legal and valid patient requests to be considered for MAiD, refusing to refer them to other doctors for assessment.
The WMA will eventually have to update its stance to neutral, to honour the range of deeply-held perspectives across the medical spectrum instead of attempting to impose the views of just one end.
1 I was unable to find any other member or spokesperson for this “group” other than Kulvinder.