A Canadian judge is due to decide this week whether to renew a temporary injunction against Winnipeg’s Grace General Hospital, whose doctors want to detach an 84-year-old Orthodox Jew from a respirator and hasten his death, against his family’s wishes.
“Prof. Shimon Glick, a leading Israeli medical ethics expert and former dean of Ben-Gurion University’s Health Sciences Faculty, said: “From a halachic point of view, removing a feeding tube from a patient who has any brain function is active euthanasia, equivalent to murder… But here, in addition, unless the patient has specifically indicated by advance directive that such is his desire, one has a violation of the patient’s autonomy, as well.”
A Grace General Hospital lawyer told the court that doctors ‘have the sole right to make decisions about treatment – even if it goes against a patient’s religious beliefs.'”