Nature Finally Intervened to Relieve Sam Golubchuk

Sam Golubchuk won’t have to wait until the end of September to hear his family argue that he ought to remain on life support no matter how long it took him to rot into oblivion. Nature finally overwhelmed the best of medical science and kicked Sam off life support.

Golubchuk’s family who, unlike Sam, weren’t rotting alive felt that Sam’s parting should be in God’s hands. The part they left out (and isn’t there always one?) is that the only thing keeping their father out of God’s hands these past many months was an array of machines and products pumped into the old guy that allowed his heart to keep beating after the rest of him had gone wherever one goes at the end.

The Golubchuk case strained medical and legal ethics. A number of physicians at Winnipeg’s Grace Hospital resigned rather than keep putting the old man through procedures they deemed futile and grotesque. And the Manitoba courts, instead of expediting the hearing of the family’s demands to keep Sam going no matter what, simply moved the trial date from December to late September. I think a courageous judge would have given them two weeks to get their witnesses together and argue their case. There’s no way of knowing for sure but I suspect the Winnipeg judges just decided to kick the can, with Sam inside, right down the road, hoping it would be over before the trial date ever rolled around.

 

CANADA – please stand up for S. Golubchuck

What in God’s name is wrong with Manitoba judges? Doctors are resigning rather than force treatment on an essentially-dead man knowing that would be nothing shy of grotesque torture.

This is being portrayed as a clash of medical ethics but it’s much more than that, it’s a collapse of the will of our legal system.

The Manitoba court ordered hospital physicians to keep 84-year old Samuel Golubchuck alive, regardless of the consequences, until the court can get off its fat, lazy ass and hear the question in late September? This poor man is already essentially dead and the Manitoba court wants to keep him on some respiratory and circulatory treadmill until “cottage time” has comfortably ended. And his very flesh is rotting away before our own eyes. Doesn’t Sam deserve a lot better than this? What kind of people could, quite knowingly, subject another human being to this fate? I sure couldn’t, could you?

If this court has a shred of integrity, it’d get off its sackcloth and silk backside and direct expedited argument, perhaps within a day. A court with even a modicum of courage would respect any ( and definitely your and mine) Canadian’s life enough to expedite this. If the victim was us, would any of us not want just that degree of respect and consideration?

There’s a powerful smell about this. Judges who aren’t willing to put Golubchuk where he deserves to be – front and centre – but who will duck and weave and dodge, seemingly hoping that he’ll be gone before they can possibly be forced to rule.

If the courts won’t stand up for Golubchuk and his right to face inevitable death without outside contrivance tantamount to torture, then we’re going to have to.

This just has to stop. People – we can’t have this in Canada!