Don't want to kill your patients, doctor? Better get into hair restoration then

On 15 May 2019 three judges on the Court of Appeal of Ontario dismissed an appeal by four individual doctors and three medical associations, including Canadian Physicians for Life, against a lower court ruling upholding the constitutionality of a policy issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario requiring doctors who have a conscientious objection to certain procedures - including euthanasia - to provide any patient requesting such a procedure with an "effective referral" to "a non-objecting, available, and accessible physician, other health-care professional, or agency".

The Court [at 184] cited favourably "evidence" that doctors who conscientiously objected not just to killing their patients but to "effectively referring" them to another doctor who would do so could easily "change the scope of their practice" to a specialty or sub-specialty where they "are unlikely to encounter requests for referrals for" euthanasia such as "hair restoration" or "obesity medicine".

The Court observes [at 123] that euthanasia carries:

the stigmatizing legacy of several centuries of criminalization grounded in religious and secular morality.

But as the law on murder has now been changed to carve out an exception for doctors and their colleagues those old-fashioned doctors who still insist on believing that murdering their patients - even on request - is no part of the profession of medicine must be brought to heel or put out to pasture.

This decision shows the profound gulf between the 2500 year Hippocratic profession of medicine with its solemn oath "I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan" - which is still upheld by the World Medical Association and all but one or two of its 112 national associations - and the new shiny trade that has the same technical skill set but none of the distinguishing features of a profession.

The Court was apparently unaware of claims that "one in five men and one in 20 women considered ending their life because of thinning or receding hair" and some studies showing a link between obesity and suicidal ideation so that doctors resistant to practicing or referring for euthanasia or assisted suicide may not even find a refuge in the hair restoration or weight loss industries.