Support Health Minister Clement for Speaking Against Insite
Health Minister Tony Clement has been getting enormous criticism from the media for taking a stand against Vancouver’s drug injection site called Insite. Let him know that you support him on this:
The Honourable Tony Clement, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6 Phone: (613) 944-7740; Fax: (613) 992-5092; EMail: [email protected]; Web Site: www.tonyclement.ca
Clement slams CMA over Insite
Aaron Derfel, Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, August 19, 2008
MONTREAL – Tony Clement, the federal Health Minister, assailed the Canadian Medical Association yesterday for supporting Vancouver’s supervised drug-injection site, arguing that allowing heroin addicts to shoot up is against their profession’s code of ethics.
“I find the ethical considerations of supervised injections to be profoundly disturbing,” Mr. Clement said in a speech, given at the CMA’s annual meeting in Montreal, that drew angry reaction from doctors.
“Is it ethical,” he asked rhetorically, “for health-care professionals to support the distribution of drugs that are of unknown substance, or purity, or potency — drugs that cannot otherwise be legally prescribed? If this were done in a doctor’s office, the provincial college [of physicians] would rightly be investigating.”
Mr. Clement added that “the supervised injection site undercuts the ethic of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada, who might begin to question whether it’s all right to allow someone to overdose under their care.” Keep reading here.
