Killing, or helping patients commit suicide, not good medicine
By Michael Swan
The Catholic Register
TORONTO (CCN)
Dr. Luigi Castagna doesn’t think his job should thrust him into a protest movement, but a stalemate over conscience rights for doctors who object to physician-assisted dying may change that.
“We may have to resort to civil disobedience,” Dr. Castagna told The Catholic Register.
Dr. Castagna is a member and former president of the St. Joseph Moscati Toronto Catholic Doctors’ Guild. He doesn’t think helping a patient commit suicide is good medicine, and he doesn’t think he should refer suicidal patients to doctors who will do it.
“You do, on occasion, encounter suicidal patients,” said Dr. Castagna. “That’s how we saw them before the (Supreme Court) decision. They were suicidal. It’s a psychological condition and you find out the reason.
“You do what you do with any patient: you do a history, a physical examination; you establish a diagnosis; and you treat them. Successful treatment means that they now wish to live again.”
Policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario policy forces doctors to provide an “effective referral” for any recognized, legal medical procedure or treatment.
The Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience is taking the College of Physicians’ and Surgeons of Ontario to court over its policy, but the cost is climbing quickly, as the Ontario attorney general is intervening on the side of the Ontario physicians’ college, which is demanding to cross-examine all five doctors involved and all the expert witnesses.
In the 10 months since Quebec legalized assisted suicide and five months since the federal government passed its law, at least 374 people have died with the help of a doctor, according to a Globe and Mail survey.
