Medical Euthanasia in Canada: Current Issues and Potential Future Expansion

Dr Mark Komrad explores the relatively new Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) law in Canada, and how it may be on the verge of opening medical euthanasia to certain qualified psychiatric patients, similar to practices in Belgium and The Netherlands (see A Psychiatrist Visits Belgium: The Epicenter of Psychiatric Euthanasia).

He also brings out specific worries about the emerging ethical and legal trends in Ontario, to stop conscientious objecting physicians from refusing to refer cases of patients seeking euthanasia to colleagues who might be willing to provide it.

Dr Komrad is a clinical psychiatrist and an ethicist. He just finished a 6-year tenure on the APA Ethics Committee and also serves on the APA Assembly. In those contexts, he helped to craft the current current APA position on Medical Euthanasia for non-terminally ill patients [PDF]. He is also on the teaching Faculty of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, Sheppard Pratt, and the University of Maryland. Dr Komrad’s opinions are his own, and he is not officially representing the APA in this article, nor any of the institutions where he is on the faculty. He is the author of You Need Help: A Step-by-Step Plan to Convince a Loved One to Get Counseling. He reports no conflicts of interest concerning the subject matter of this article.