On 10 September, the College of Physicians of Quebec published a “Guide to medically assisted dying” intended for health care professionals authorised from December onwards to practice euthanasia for adults at the end of their lives and for persons subject to exceptional and incurable suffering (cf. Gènéthique du 2 septembre 2015).
The “Collectif des médecins contre l’euthanasie” (Anti-euthanasia physicians) denounced article 7.2 of this guide which, “calls for doctors to falsify the actual cause of death on the death certificate (…) for patients with access to medically assisted dying”. In fact, this article states that “doctors must record the disease or morbid disorder justifying recourse to medically assisted dying as the primary cause of death” because reference to “medically assisted dying” on the death certificate could pose a problem “if relatives had not been informed or the patient wished to keep this information confidential”.
For the Anti-euthanasia physicians, “this kind of practice constitutes a serious breach of ethics and poses the risk of serious repercussions and inevitable abuse in addition to falsifying official statistics on the real causes of death in Quebec”.
Collectif des médecins contre l’euthanasie (23/09/2015)