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10Federal Annual Reports on MAID: Informative but Incomplete PictureIn Jaro Kotalik & David Shannon (eds.), Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada: Key Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 2147483647-2147483647. 2023.Annual Reports on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) issued by Health CanadaCanada on behalf of the Government of Canada strive to make essential information public, on this large national program that over five years has provided death to over 30,000 Canadians. The source of the information is self-reporting by physicians and nurse practitioners who offer to act as MAID assessors and providers, as well as self-reporting by cooperating pharmacists. Focus of this discussion is the latest availabl…Read more
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7Monitoring of MAID: Deficits of Transparency and AccountabilityIn Jaro Kotalik & David Shannon (eds.), Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada: Key Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 115-126. 2023.Monitoring of MAIDMonitoring of MAID was recognised as an essential component of the MAID program. However, monitoring started late in the rollout of the program, and even at present is missing some essential elements that would be important for effective oversight and public accountability. Health CanadaCanada is using some of the data obtained from practitioners and pharmacists to produce Annual Reports on MAID, but these reports aim at providing only a “societal perspective,” rather than an i…Read more
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27Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada: Key Multidisciplinary Perspectives (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2023.This book, written both for a Canadian and an international readership, provides a multidisciplinary review of the framework and performance of the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program. In the first five years (2015-2021) of operation, this program delivered voluntary euthanasia and assistance in suicide to over 30,000 Canadian residents, presently representing a 30% annual growth. Looking back on these first five years, the 30 Canadian scholars and clinicians contributing to this…Read more
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32Framework for Ethical Decision-Making Based on Mission, Vision and Values of the InstitutionHEC Forum 26 (2): 125-133. 2014.The authors led the development of a framework for ethical decision-making for an Academic Health Sciences Centre. They understood the existing mission, vision, and values statement (MVVs) of the centre as a foundational assertion that embodies an ethical commitment of the institution. Reflecting the Patient and Family Centred Model of Care the institution is living, the MVVs is a suitable base on which to construct an ethics framework. The resultant framework consists of a set of questions for …Read more
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16The Canadian medical assistance in dying program, based on an ambitious piece of legislation and detailed regulations, has failed to provide Canadians with sufficient publicly accessible evidence to show that it is operating as mandated by the requirements of the law, regulations, and expectations of all stakeholders. The federal law that was adopted in 2016 defined the eligibility criteria and put in place a number of safeguards that had to be satisfied before providing assisted dying to a pers…Read more
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210Examining the suitability of the principle of subsidiarity for bioethicsKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 20 (4): 371-390. 2010.There is a significant omission in the whole endeavor of moral analysis as commonly used in bioethics. Whether the analysis is based on a set of moral principles grounded in common morality, on a deontological or a consequentialist theory, or on other considerations, the focus has been to assist moral agents in making ethically appropriate decisions. Little or no attention has been paid to the issue of who the appropriate moral agent or decision maker is in any given situation. Yet, how to make …Read more
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43Preparing for an influenza pandemic: Ethical issuesBioethics 19 (4). 2005.In the near future, experts predict, an influenza pandemic will likely spread throughout the world. Many countries have been creating a contingency plan in order to mitigate the severe health and social consequences of such an event. Examination of the pandemic plans of Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, from an ethical perspective, raises several concerns. One: scarcity of human and material resources is assumed to be severe. Plans focus on prioritization but do not identify reso…Read more
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46Aboriginal Health Care and Bioethics: A Reflection on the Teaching of the Seven GrandfathersAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (5): 38-43. 2016.Contemporary bioethics recognizes the importance of the culture in shaping ethical issues, yet in practice, a process for ethical analysis and decision making is rarely adjusted to the culture and ethnicity of involved parties. This is of a particular concern in a health care system that is caring for a growing Aboriginal population. We raise the possibility of constructing a bioethics grounded in traditional Aboriginal knowledge. As an example of an element of traditional knowledge that contain…Read more
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18Can Mandatory Vaccination of Health Care Professionals during an Influenza Pandemic ever be Justified?Advances in Bioethics 9 69-89. 2006.