CMAJ • July 1, 2008; 179 (1). doi:10.1503/cmaj.1080063.
© 2008 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association.
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Letters

Faith and the end of life

Amir Attaran, LLB DPhil*, Paul C. Hébert, MD MHSc{dagger} and Matthew B. Stanbrook, MD PhD{ddagger}

*Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ont.; {dagger}Editor-in-Chief, CMAJ; {ddagger}Deputy Editor, Scientific, CMAJ

[The authors respond:]

We thank Emmanuel Maicas for his comment, but we believe his disagreement arises from a misreading of our editorial.1 He is not correct that our editorial "did not mention that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of religion and did not discuss the implications of this protection." On the contrary, our editorial expressly acknowledged "the constitutional freedom to one's religion" but noted that as is the case for other human rights, society's affirmation of religious freedom is not absolute. Just as one cannot seize on freedom of speech to yell "Fire!" in a public place, one cannot muster freedom of religion to command "never withhold my medical care" in a public health care system.

In fact, the very first sentence of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms makes it abundantly clear that one's freedoms are not absolute: it reads that one's freedoms are "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."2 In many cases, including Samuel Golubchuk's, there are reasonable limits to medical treatment beyond which there lies only medical futility. Jewish or Christian, Muslim or Hindu, no matter what one's faith, it is the fallacy of freedom of religion as absolute and trumping secular medical judgment and ethics that our editorial rejects.

Footnotes

Competing interests: See www.cmaj.ca/misc/edboard.shtml.


REFERENCES

  1. Attaran A, Hébert PC, Stanbrook MB. Ending life with grace and agreement [editorial]. CMAJ 2008;178:1115-6.[Free Full Text]
  2. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c11 [Charter].




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Right arrow End-of-life decisions
Right arrow Other geriatric medicine
Right arrow Patient-caregiver communication