Christine Jamieson

This chapter provides religious and spiritual reflection on medical assistance in dying (MAID) from five perspectives: IndigenousIndigenous, MuslimMuslim, Jewish, Roman CatholicCatholic, and ProtestantProtestant. Each contributor was asked the following basic questions to direct their reflection. What would be the guidelines that you would offer people of your faith tradition? What would people from your faith tradition be concerned about? How would they make a decision regarding MAID? What guidance, as a leader in your faith, would you offer? Each contributor brought their own religious tradition to bear on addressing these questions in various manners. While each offers unique points, there are common threads or themes that emerge, for example, our lives are a gift and not something we necessarily “own” and MAID is not a solitary decision, but others and communities are implicated. Each contributor pushes the reader into the religious realm of meaning and value and so raise important points not considered in the secular realm.

Healthcare workers are, of necessity, oriented toward immediate action in addressing urgent, concrete situations. This is particularly true in acute care settings such as Intensive Care Units, Critical Care Units and Emergency rooms in Hospitals. At the same time, healthcare workers suffer significantly higher levels of moral distress than other types of workers. transcendental mode, something that is particularly challenging in goal oriented healthcare workers. This paper draws on data collected from several research studies conducted in hospitals in Canada. The research was done through the lens of Lonergan’s transcendental method and his work on values and bias.

The paper links an effective, dynamic method of ethical deliberation based on the thought of Bernard Lonergan with the activity of overseeing research involving human subjects. The ethical deliberation that occupies Research Ethics Boards (REBs) is multi-levelled and involves a wide diversity of disciplines. While the process can be reduced to static, “rubber-stamping” functioning, in reality, successful REB deliberation involves a process that is anything but static. Rather than narrowing in on one or two specific issues, the dynamic activity of ethical deliberation can set a process in motion that is able to address the wide horizon of concerns implicated in research involving human subjects. While REBs are mandated to maintain and assure ethical standards in research involving human subjects and to contribute to education in research ethics, the framework is a gauge against which they can measure the degree to which they are fulfilling this mandate.