The Law, Ethics and Aesthetics of Assisted Dying听
March 27th, 2026, 1:00 - 2:30PM, in-person
VANESSA RAMPTON is a senior researcher within Assisted Lab at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and an affiliate member of the Department of Equity, Ethics, and Politics at 黑料网爆吃瓜 University in Montreal. Her recent book is Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea (Cambridge, 2025).
Cultural artifacts such as feature films, documentaries, and memoirs are听frequently听referred to in听assisted听dying law-making, often to garner support for a particular position. In such instances, these cultural products, often mediatized, compelling stories, tend to be cited as evidence or facts and used as part of a legal argument. This talk will present some hypotheses on the citation of end-of-life stories in different law and policy processes. It will also discuss how to navigate the emotionally compelling yet unevenly representative narratives shaping public understandings of suffering, dying, and choice.听
听
MAiD for Mental Illness and the Human Cost of Precarious Constitutional Claims
March 20th, 2026, 1:00 - 2:30PM, in-person
TRUDO LEMMENS, CandJur, LicJur (KULeuven), LLM bioethics, DCL (黑料网爆吃瓜), is Professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy. He is cross appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and the Joint Centre for Bioethics. His research focuses on the interaction between law, governance tools, and ethical norms and values in the context of health care, biomedical research, pharmaceutical and other health product development, and knowledge production.听
In 2021, Canada鈥檚 federal parliament expanded its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law to include individuals who are not approaching their death. It also endorsed, in principle, extending MAID eligibility to persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness. This latter expansion, however, has been repeatedly postponed鈥攎ost recently until at least 2027鈥攁mid ongoing clinical, ethical, and legal concerns.听听
Prof. Lemmens' seminar addresses several key questions surrounding MAID for mental illness. First, it questions the claim that such an expansion is constitutionally required. Second, it explores why providing MAID for mental illness cannot be justified as sound public policy consistent with suicide prevention commitments. He argues that the policy considerations help to respond the constitutional claims. Drawing on concrete case examples from Ontario鈥檚 Chief Coroner MAID Death Review Committee reports and from the psychiatric euthanasia practice in Belgium and the Netherlands, he documents the serious concerns about expansion of MAID eligibility in the name of a precarious constitutional right. Expansion, so will be argued, is already putting many Canadians at risk of premature death; a risk that will be so much higher if MAID for sole reasons of mental illness will be officially permitted.听听听
Anesthetized Bodies as Teaching Tools: Consent and Controversy
鈥�January 28th, 2026, 1:00 - 2:30PM, in-person
PHOEBE FRIESEN is a philosopher and medical ethicist, working within the Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy and the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at 黑料网爆吃瓜. Her work engages with ethical and epistemic issues related to the production and implementation of knowledge in the health sciences, drawing on feminist philosophy of science, ethics scholarship, and methodologies from the social sciences.听
In this seminar, Phoebe Friesen examines the increasing critical attention on the practice of medical students performing pelvic exams on anesthetized patients without consent. Advocacy efforts in favour of explicit consent have led to substantial legislative changes across the United States. In Canada, despite the existence of professional guidelines recommending explicit consent before such exams take place, recent data indicates that non-consensual exams are still part of medical training and that medical students often report moral discomfort and distress in relation to the practice. This presentation asks: How should we respond to this data? Is a legislative path appropriate, or can other levers help ensure explicit consent across Canadian medical schools?
听
