Why this top doctor's dying wish is for Canada to accept physician-assisted suicide Add to ...

Eight days before he died of a brain tumour, Dr. Donald Low summoned his waning strength to make a public plea for a change in the law prohibiting assisted suicide. “He wanted  to say something public about the struggle he went through to have an assisted death, preferably with the  types of barbiturates that are available in the countries that allow it,” his widow Maureen Taylor said in an interview. Dr. Low, the infectious disease expert who became the calming voice and public medical face during  the SARS crisis a decade ago, “believed in assisted suicide and if it had been legal, he would have had no problem writing those kind of prescriptions for people who were terminally ill and of sound mind,”  Ms. Taylor said. In June, 2012, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that the Criminal Code prohibition against assisted suicide is discriminatory. That decision is being appealed by the federal government. Meanwhile, Quebec became the first jurisdiction in Canada to table right-to-die legislation last June. It has not yet become law. Special thanks to Canadian Partnership against Cancer for the video