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Federal Health Minister Tony Clement contends safe-injection sites may well violate the standards of medical ethics, a position that earned him a crisp and swift rebuke from the country's largest doctors' group.
Speaking to the Canadian Medical Association's annual assembly, Clement stepped up his attacks on Insite, a controversial supervised injection centre in Vancouver's heroin-blighted Downtown Eastside, where intravenous drug users are allowed to shoot up.
Calling the ethical considerations of Insite "profoundly disturbing," Clement held up the centre as a "debilitating example" to medical staff and an example "not of health care for the living, but palliative care for the slowly dying."
"(Addicts) need our help and our intervention, not a place to shoot up. ... Injections are not medicine; they do not heal," he said, musing that allowing addicts to use illegal drugs under medical supervision is a "profound moral issue."
Clement said drug treatment is preferable to safe-injection sites, and that the $3 million spent annually on Insite is money that is diverted from other programs.
Though Clement received polite applause following his remarks, there was a decidedly warmer reception for those who challenged his speech during a question-and-answer session.
Dr. Bonnie Cham, who presides over the CMA's ethics committee, was applauded loudly when she said "the use of medical ethics to justify a political decision ... is troubling at best and misleading at worst."
In a news conference after the speech, outgoing CMA president Brian Day said Clement was "off base."
"Canada's doctors and their health minister must agree to disagree," said Day, who pointed out that 80 per cent of CMA members support safe-injection sites as part of a comprehensive policy to fight drug addiction.
Clement, for his part, insisted he was not questioning the ethics of the doctors who work at Insite or support it, saying: "I'm simply asking a question. It's up to the doctors to answer it."
Clement's remarks effectively overshadowed a $130 million funding announcement for the establishment of a national mental health commission – chaired by former Liberal senator Michael Kirby – and prompted a flurry of criticism from political opponents.
Liberal MP Dr. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's) called for Clement to be replaced."
