Canada's medical Colleges harm patients and the proper practice of medicine

Canada's provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have embarked on an unprecedented campaign of blatant interference with the practice of medicine, which is harming patients as well as doctors who want to provide the best possible treatments. Through their active support for mandatory vaccination, the Colleges are repudiating the Nuremberg Code and its ethical principle of informed and voluntary consent to all medical treatments without any duress or pressure of any kind.

Professional regulators like Law Societies, Associations of Professional Engineers, and medical Colleges have their place when it comes to upholding codes of conduct and standards of practice.

For example, the Code of Conduct of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta requires doctors to strive for high?quality patient care, treat others with respect, maintain confidentiality, and refrain from physical and sexual contact outside the proper role of a physician.

The Code of Ethics and Professionalism of the Canadian Medical Association holds out humility and prudence as virtues exemplified by the ethical physician.

The Standards of Practice require doctors to obtain the patient's voluntary and informed consent prior to any treatment or procedure, and must advise the patient of risks and of reasonable alternative treatments available.

Neither the Code of Conduct, nor the Code of Ethics, nor the Standards of Practice imposes detailed requirements on how doctors are to exercise their professional judgment in specific circumstances, regarding the best treatment for individual patients.

In fact, the Code of Ethics expressly states that it is the physician (not the College) who "owes a duty of loyalty to protect and further the patient’s best interests and goals of care by using the physician’s expertise, knowledge, and prudent clinical judgment." The Code of Ethics proclaims that the doctor-patient relationship (not the College-patient relationship, which does not exist) "is at the heart of the practice of medicine. It is a relationship of trust that recognizes the inherent vulnerability of the patient, even as the patient is an active participant in their own care."

The Law Society will not tell lawyers what court actions the lawyer may or may not bring to court, or what specific legal advice to give to an individual client. An Association of Professional Engineers won't tell its members how to build a bridge to prevent its future collapse, or what materials may or may not be used in its construction. Likewise, the College as a regulatory body is not appropriately suited to provide (let alone impose) specific medical treatment on all patients.  Professional bodies do not have the expertise necessary to provide one-size-fits-all advice that will be good for all patients, or all clients. The College regulates doctors; it does not treat patients.

Sadly, not long after lockdowns were imposed by governments across Canada in March of 2020, Canada's medical Colleges started demanding that doctors support lockdown measures as the best way to deal with COVID. As Alberta's College explained it in 2020: "It is important physicians across Alberta adapt their practices to ensure that they comply with the guidance of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. ... Physicians should encourage Albertans to adhere to the Chief Medical Officer of Health’s advice ..."

Colleges have taken the same authoritarian approach to the new COVID vaccines, which have not been subjected to any long-term safety testing. Only a politician -- not any real scientist -- would declare a brand new vaccine to be "safe" when it was developed in mere months, rather than over the course of many years so as to determine its long-term safety. As for the claim that the new COVID vaccines are "effective," this seems to be true for only six to nine months, unlike natural immunity.

Colleges are now expressly prohibiting doctors from exercising their own professional judgment when it comes to granting vaccine exemptions and mask exemptions. This blatant interference with the doctor-patient relationship disregards the Nuremberg Code, and its ethical principle of informed and voluntary consent. One Calgary nurse I spoke with, who is not yet willing to go public with her story, told me that her doctor advised her very strongly against taking the vaccine in early 2021, when vaccines were appropriately a matter of individual patient choice, like any other treatment. Now that vaccines are mandatory (on pain of job loss, expulsion from university, and second-class citizenship) that same doctor is prohibited by Alberta's College from providing his patient with an exemption from the vaccine. This in spite of his position, as a trained professional, that this vaccine would be harmful for his patient. Threatened by a government body that could pull his license, this doctor has moved from "This vaccine would be very bad for you" to "You must take this vaccine." This is politics, not science.

When Colleges interfere with vaccine exemptions and mask exemptions, and when they blindly promote lockdowns without considering harmful effects, they act as an enforcing arm of the state, or of employers. Even if the patient's interests were not compromised, this conduct would still be wrong because Colleges have neither expertise nor legal authority to impose any kind of mandate or treatment on all patients.

Of course, the Colleges would argue that they are acting to defend the patient because masks and jabs are good for patients. But even if masks and jabs were good for 100% of patients, this argument still fails because there is no circumstance when any competent patient can be forced to undergo treatment "for his own good." Doctors routinely recommend exercise and a good diet as necessary for good health, yet no patient is forced to follow this advice, based on patient autonomy and the Charter right to control one's own body.

Imposing treatments on people without their informed and fully voluntary consent cannot be justified in the name of "the public good," especially when the vaccine manufacturers and government officials have stated publicly that the COVID vaccine does not stop the spread of COVID . Either the jab is for the good of society, in which case the College is out of line when enforcing it, or it's for the patient, in which case the patient has an absolute right to refuse it.

Charter rights and freedoms come into play when medical Colleges turn themselves into dictatorial bodies which impose rigid government control over the practice of medicine.

Canada's medical Colleges are interfering in the doctor-patient relationship and micro-managing the practice of medicine when it comes to lockdowns, masks, vaccines and COVID treatments.

Threatening doctors with the loss of their licence to practice medicine is no different from the persecution of Galileo over his minority opinion that the earth revolves around the sun. It is only because science was able to continue its path forward that people eventually accepted Galileo's heliocentric thesis as the correct one, in spite of authoritarian efforts to impose "scientific truth."

As long as Colleges persist without competence or legal legitimacy in interfering with the doctor-patient relationship, and as long as Colleges persist in their hostility to scientific inquiry and debate by imposing their view of "truth," they will continue to erode the trust that Canadians are able to place in the medical profession.

John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca), which represents doctors across Canada who have questioned the government's narrative on lockdowns and vaccines, and who for that reason are now facing disciplinary proceedings at the hands of Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons.