MS Society stands by Manitoba patient granted doctor-assisted death

The MS Society of Canada is supporting a Manitoba woman with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in her right to have adoctor-assisted death.

A Manitoba judge granted the woman known as Patient No. 3 a doctor-assisted death on Monday.

• Court grants Winnipeg woman with MS doctor-assisted death

The Society's president and CEO, Yves Savoie, said patients like her need to have options.

"Our basic approach to this is that this is really about an individual's choice," said Savoie.

Patient No. 3 is mentally capable of making a decision and is described as "functionally quadriplegic" and "enduring suffering," said court documents.

She requires a ventilator and feeding tube to and expressed a fear of choking to death. Savoie said not all MS patients experience these severe and debilitating conditions, but for those who do, the effects of the disease are "very disabling."

"There can be impairments to one's digestive ability, problems with swallowing, with speech, but as is the case for instance in ALS, there is no loss of one's mental capacity to make a decision," he said.

Savoie addedthe pain that accompanies severe MS is nearly impossible to address.

"Neuropathic pain is a kind of electrical pain you feel through your nerves that is very, very difficult to treat and very painful," he said.

But not all MS patientsexperience these severe, debilitating symptoms.

For many patients, their MS symptomscan be "quite invisible," Savoie said, andthere is a wide range of views on assisted death in the MS community.

"It might create problems of numbness or lack of balance but not interfere with someone's ability to raise a family or to work," he said.

MS Society critical of Liberalbill

Manitoba's Patient No. 3, while faced with a progressive disease, would not necessarily meet the Liberal government's criteria in its medical assistance in dyinglegislation, added Savoie.

The federal bill in its current formlimits access to a doctor-assisted death tothose"suffering intolerably" and whose death is"reasonably foreseeable."

• Doctor-assisted dying bill restricted to adults facing 'foreseeable' death

The MS Society head would like to see the Liberals refer their assisted dying legislation to the Supreme Court.