It does not matter what doctors are forced to do. It matters that doctors are forced.

This week, the courts upheld the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s policy of forcing doctors to refer for Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD/euthanasia).

What will it be next week?

Forcing doctors to refer goes against everything that underpins medicine, science, medical ethics, and Western political philosophy.

It will take a number of blogs to sort it out. I can only introduce the nonsense in this post.

Forced to Refer

The court ruled that patients’ rights of access to healthcare trumped doctors’ rights to freedom of religion and conscience, when it comes to Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD/euthanasia) and “other contentious issues.”

Social media offered its own verdict: Doctors must do what patients want, full stop. Doctors are technicians who practice according to guidelines and accepted standards of care.

Mainstream media and activist groups cheered. The issue is settled. Religious doctors must keep religion out of the clinic. They must shut up, refer, or quit medicine.

Forced to Refer Nonsense

Like all mobs, social justice mobs thrive on nonsense. They lather up with moral sanctimony and screech definitive solutions to complex issues based on straw men and ignorance.

Religious Nonsense

Most nurses are no longer nuns, and doctors are not priests or pastors. Most doctors and nurses — even religious ones — never bring religion into clinical care. Continue reading “Doctors Forced to Refer for MAiD/Euthanasia”

Hundreds marched on Queen’s Park yesterday to protest proposed cuts to Autism funding.

Stories and signage suggest that many protesters had children with severe illness. Paediatric disease moves us, as it should.

Compassion for autistic children fuelled the march but was that the only motivation?

Autism

Rates of autism continue to rise.

In 2017,  1 in 42 boys and 1 in 189 girls in the USA had autism.  Whereas in 1966, experts estimated the rate at 1:2500, probably severe cases only.

In 1987, the DSM expanded autism criteria to identify more subtle patients. And in 2006, the American Academy of Paediatrics advised to screen all children between 18-24 months of age for autism.

Last year, one study reported that between 1 in 65 to 1 in 88 children have the condition.

A former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK caused a fracas when he said that parents seek a diagnosis of autism as an excuse for bad parenting.  Parental failure created the autism epidemic.

The Royal College of Psychiatry quickly denounced the article. Autism was not over-diagnosed.

Secondary Gain

Everyone benefits from a diagnosis of Autism. Continue reading “Autism, Secondary Gain, and Rationing”

Imagine your first car. Your paper route pays for gas. Your parents pay for insurance. Without parental co-funding, you would be riding your bicycle.

Every country in the world, except Canada, uses some element of private funding to keep its medical system on the road.

Every country pays for doctors and hospitals using a mix of tax dollars, through government, and private money, through insurance or cash payments. Most developed countries outperform Canada.

Obsessed With Australia

Medicare activists use Australia in almost every presentation, article, and conversation about healthcare. Australia is their poster child for how private funding fails.

Here is the argument:

Australian medicare lags behind Canadian medicare.

Australia allows private funding.

Therefore, Canadian medicare would deteriorate with private funding.

It is a bit like saying: Cancer can cause baldness. Jack is bald. Therefore, Jack has cancer.

But the argument often emphasizes a change in performance also: Continue reading “Obsessed With Australia — Private Funding For Healthcare”