Sept Îles doctors threaten to resign over potential radioactive contamination of drinking water PDF Print E-mail
By Charlie Fidelman, Montreal Gazette December 7, 2009 
MONTREAL - Doctors threatening a mass resignation in protest over a plan to open a uranium mine near their North Shore community got
a severe reprimand on Monday.
Yves Lamontagne, head of the Quebec College of Physicians, said it would be unethical for 20 doctors in Sept Îles to walk out on the job
and leave the population without proper health services.
“If 20 doctors leave, the hospital (Centre hospitalier et des services sociaux de Sept Îles) would have to close. There is already a shortage
of doctors … and that would be chaos,” Lamontagne said.
There is only one hospital in town.
Rather than threatening to quit, the physicians should have signed petitions and gone on protest marches, he said.
But after spending the last year fighting mining exploration activities,20 of the 57 hospital physicians – psychiatrists, family doctors,
anesthetists, a lung specialist, surgeons, gynecologists – said they needed to inform the public about potential radioactive contamination
of the town’s water supply.
“Fearing for the health of the population, our personal health and that of our families, especially our children, we have decided to leave the
region, and for many of us, even the province,” the doctors said in a letter sent Thursday to Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc.
The doctors are asking for a moratorium on the mine.
According to the physicians’ code of ethics, doctors are to abstain from engaging in activities that could harm the population, Lamontagne said
of the proposed mass resignation.
But their letter could also be seen as preventative medicine, Lamontagne admitted, “because it’s better to prevent than to cure.”