The Grim Reaper Wears White

In Winnipeg a chilling court case is being heard. It is the children of Samuel Golubchuk against doctors at the Salvation Army Grace General Hospital. The doctors have decided that it is time for Mr. Golubchuk, 84, to die, and they are planning to remove his ventilation tube and if that does not kill him quickly enough they will remove his feeding tube. If he shows any discomfort they will administer morphine.

His children do not want Mr. Golubchuk's treatment suspended and have said that since he is an Orthodox Jew he would not want it terminated either since this practise is completely against Jewish law.

The director of the ICU unit has told the Golubchuk children that neither their wishes nor their father's wishes are relevant! He would do what he decided was appropriate! The director's lawyer, Bill Olson, told the CBC that "physicians have the sole right to make decisions about treatment - even if it goes against a patients religious beliefs - and that there is no right to a continuation of treatment." The ICU director has the full support of Dr. Jeff Blackner, executive director of the office of ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. He said, "We want to make sure that clinical decisions are left to doctors and not judges. Doctors' decisions are made only with the best interest of the individual patient at heart." How can he possibly say that when it is undisputed that Mr. Golubchuk would oppose this decision? And I don't want these decisions made by doctors or judges. They should properly be left to the patient and the patient's family.

A judge is to decide this week if he will renew a temporary injunction against the hospital. However it was learned that Samuel Golubchuk regained consciousness several days ago and was interacting with people in spite of the fact that doctors have asserted that he has minimal brain function. They apparently failed to report his improvement to the courts.

In Holland, where euthanasia has been legal since 1984, 3% of all deaths in 1995 were due to euthanasia or assisted suicide. The figures for 1995 reported 3,600 authorized cases as well as an additional 900 others where doctors acted without consent. It has been reported that a lot of patients in Holland are afraid to go to the hospital because of this situation.

Do we want a society where doctors have the right to make the sole decision concerning who will receive treatment and who will not, who will live and who will die? I certainly don't. I do not want my life, or the life of my loved ones, to be reduced to whether or not it makes "economic sense" to keep them alive. Everyone who is as outraged about this situation as I am must make their opinions heard loudly and clearly by our elected representatives. Doctors who take these matters into their own hands must be prosecuted for murder - because that is what it is.