Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act has been on the books for nearly two decades. Like similar laws in many Canadian provinces—and American states—it sets out the process for making treatment decisions when a patient cannot provide or withhold her consent—when she is in a coma and on life support, for example.
America has them too. The above is from the same Slate article you linked.
Maybe don’t just pick and choose portions of an article that match your confirmation bias.
I never said they didn’t but I will point that America’s version pretty much just assigns guardianship and decision making authority to one guardian or another in the case of a dispute. The Ontario version can actually TAKE guardianship from someone and make decisions about care on their own authority.
I’d much prefer a panel if doctors deciding my fate rather than my mother or my father who may be blinded by their own emotions.
Even more if my family members were part of a sect like the Jehovah’s witnesses, for whom not even blood transfusions are acceptable. How stupid do you have to be to leave a loved one to die just to follow the instructions given by illiterate people living 2000 years ago? This kind of decisions should be informed but should also have limits around them. Keeping religion outside if this realm should be a very clear one for instance
America has them too. The above is from the same Slate article you linked.
Maybe don’t just pick and choose portions of an article that match your confirmation bias.
I never said they didn’t but I will point that America’s version pretty much just assigns guardianship and decision making authority to one guardian or another in the case of a dispute. The Ontario version can actually TAKE guardianship from someone and make decisions about care on their own authority.
Regardless of how it works in America the point stands. Canada’s “Death Panels” were not a fabrication. The “Consent and Capacity Board” of Ontario exists.
I’d much prefer a panel if doctors deciding my fate rather than my mother or my father who may be blinded by their own emotions.
Even more if my family members were part of a sect like the Jehovah’s witnesses, for whom not even blood transfusions are acceptable. How stupid do you have to be to leave a loved one to die just to follow the instructions given by illiterate people living 2000 years ago? This kind of decisions should be informed but should also have limits around them. Keeping religion outside if this realm should be a very clear one for instance