Canada Hospital Wants To Hasten Patient's Death

From Cross Currents:

This week Jerusalem Post health reporter Judy Siegel reported that Samuel Golubchuk, the 84-year-old frum Jew from Winnepeg, whose doctors seek to remove him from his ventilator and feeding tube, had awakened. Today’s Email brought a further up-date from Dr. Leon Zachorowicz, a frum neurologist, who has submitted an affidavit in the case. Dr. Zachorowicz describes Mr. Golubchuk as “awake, alert, has returned back to his baseline, sitting up in a chair at times, more interactive, and shaking hands purposively.”

Nevertheless his doctors still seek to kill him, and are contesting the matter in court, including moving to exclude Dr. Zachorowicz’s affidavit and those of other experts on the grounds that they arrived too late. Apparently winning to them is more important than Mr. Golubchuk’s life. Indeed in a similar case recently in Calgary, involving an elderly Chinese man, whose family contested the doctors’ decision to cut off life support, and won, the patient eventually improved so much that he was able to walk out of the hospital and return home. Nevertheless the doctors continued to pursue an appeal. Presumably they wanted to bring him back to the hospital and kill him.

There is a hearing this afternoon that might well determine Mr. Golubchuk’s fate. His name is Chaim Shmuel ben Pinya. His son Percy can be reached at sgolubchuk@shaw.ca The family is looking for support to help finance the costly litigation.