Will late SARS scientist Donald Low’s deathbed plea rekindle debate over assisted suicide?

Dr. Donald Low became a familiar face to Canadians during the 2003 SARS crisis.

The microbiologist not only helped lead the medical response to deadly respiratory disease that took more than 40 lives, mostly in Toronto, his frequent TV appearances provided a calming presence as health workers struggled to contain its spread.

Low's efforts were praised when he died last week at age 68 of an aggressive, untreatable brain tumour. In its obituary, the Toronto Star noted people felt close enough to Low that as he lost weight during the exhaustive SARS battle, strangers wrote to him to express their concern about his health.

[ Related: Little consensus among Canadian doctors on issue of assisted suicide ]

But the soft-spoken scientist wrote, or rather recorded, his own postscript with a video pleading that the Canadian government reconsider its opposition to doctor-assisted death.

In the video, recorded about a week before he died and posted Tuesday on YouTube by Cancer View Canada, Low described with almost clinical detachment how the brain-stem tumour would rob him of control of his body.

Resting on a couch with one eye held open by surgical tape, Low said he would have preferred to avoid the indignities he knew were coming as the tumour took away strength, sight and other functions.

“I’m just frustrated not being able to have control over my own life, not being able to make the decision for myself when enough is enough,” Low said in the video, produced by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer.

[ Related: Assisted suicide debate reignites; minister stands firm ]

“I really envy countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands and the United States where this is possible. Why make people suffer for no reason when there’s an alternative? I just don’t understand it.”

Low conceded he believed it would be a long time "before we mature to a level where we accept dying with dignity." He was not afraid to die, he said, only worried about the manner of his death.

"There's a lot of clinicians in opposition to dying with dignity," said Low. "I wish they could live in my body for 24 hours and I think they would change that opinion."

The almost eight-minute video, intercut with still photos of Low with his family, fades to black with a message that he "did not have the death he had hoped for but he died in his wife's arms and was not in pain."

CTV News noted that in the death notice published Saturday in the Globe and Mail, Low's family asked people to "advocate legalization of assisted dying" in his memory.

Assisted suicide — assisted death or euthanasia, if you prefer — has been a hot topic for more than two decades, and the Criminal Code sanctions against it are likely to be tested again in the Supreme Court of Canada.

[ Related: Appeal Court rules B.C. woman at centre of right-to-die case can still have assisted suicide ]

Victoria resident Sue Rodriguez, who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) lost a constitutional bid to overturn the ban in 1993, though in the end she defied the law and had an assisted death.

Another case is working its way through the court system after Kelowna, B.C., resident Gloria Taylor, who also suffered from ALS, spearheaded a constitutional challenge.

Taylor died last October but lived long enough to see the B.C. Supreme Court agree that her rights to liberty and security of the person were violated by the assisted-suicide ban. Ottawa has appealed the decision but Taylor was granted a special exemption for assisted death. She died without using it.