10
OTTAWA — Singer-songwriter Loreena McKennitt has dived into the controversy over a doctor's graphic first-person description of the dying moments of a Canadian soldier at a military hospital in Afghanistan, accusing the doctor of invading the family's privacy and breaching his code of ethics as a doctor.
Ms. McKennitt lashed out at Kevin Patterson, the B.C. doctor and author who used the death of Corporal Kevin Megeney, a Nova Scotia reservist, on the operating table as the climax of a 7,000-word memoir he penned for Mother Jones magazine about his month working at the base hospital in Kandahar.
"The real issue of this story is not that gruesome details of war were divulged, but rather that a soldier and his family's privacy was invaded," Ms. McKennitt wrote in a posting on Mother Jones's website.
"Hopefully, Dr. Patterson secured the permission of the soldier's family to disclose his identity. If not, this is a deeply regrettable breach, not only of his own code of ethics as a doctor and quite possibly in his duty to the Department of National Defence, but significantly to the privacy of the soldier and his family at a time of exceptional vulnerability."
Related Articles
Dr. Patterson has conceded he never asked permission from the Megeney family before writing the account. His actions are currently the subject of two separate investigations by the Department of National Defence, which had hired him as a civilian internist to work at the military hospital because of a shortage of military doctors.
Ms. McKennitt recently won a long legal battle in Britain to censor publication of a biography by a onetime friend, whose contents the singer alleged breached her privacy.
Dr. Patterson has said that because the soldier's death was covered in the news media - he was shot in his tent at the base in an incident that remains under investigation - he did not need to seek permission.
Ms. McKennitt describes Dr. Patterson's explanation as "disingenuous and self-serving."
"A media mention is a very different matter than exposing the intimacies of a person's death," she writes. Unless there is a true public interest in disclosing personal information and unless permission is first sought, the media are simply involved in "prurient voyeurism for financial gain."
In a telephone interview from her home in Stratford, Ont., Ms. McKennitt said she was concerned that people might think the Canadian Forces were simply trying to hide disturbing images of the Afghan mission. "Support of the war or the mission has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with privacy."
Ms. McKennitt is honorary colonel of 435 Squadron, a search-and-rescue squadron based in Winnipeg.
Medical ethicists and doctors say that Dr. Patterson may find himself under investigation for breaching his responsibilities as a physician by the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons, which is responsible for his medical licence.
Clare Jeffrey, editor of Mother Jones, defended Dr. Patterson.
She backed the decision to name Cpl. Megeney, saying that "not naming him seemed like false anonymity at best. From a journalist's perspective, it seemed disingenuous at best."
