A decision in the Netherlands to approve the euthanasia of a woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease has raised questions over how far mercy killing can apply to patients with dementia. Under Dutch law doctors performing euthanasia must ensure that the patient has made a voluntary and well considered request. This requirement has generally excluded patients with advanced dementia, as they are no longer considered competent to express their wishes. Now the Euthanasia Assessment Committee, to which doctors must report the cases of patients they have helped to die, has made an exception in the case of one woman, emphasising her long history of requesting euthanasia and the degree of communication still possible at her death. It is seen as the first case of euthanasia of a “heavily demented” patient. The Dutch Right to Die Society, which campaigns for euthanasia, supports the case but points out on its website that the woman was “officially incompetent.”
New scheme called 'Life End' will respond to sick people whose own doctors have refused to help them end their lives at home. A controversial system of mobile euthanasia units that will travel around the country to respond to the wishes of sick people who wish to end their lives has been launched in the Netherlands.
RAPSI spoke with Penney Lewis, a law professor at King’s College London and expert on end-of-life issues. Lewis explained that “There aren't any current legislative proposals (being considered by the legislature) although debates are held in the House of Commons on the Director of Public Prosecutions' (DPP) policy on assisted suicide.” Lewis is critical of the DPP’s current policy due to its failure to include any reference to a patient’s condition or experience on the basis of discrimination concerns, its preferential treatment of amateur rather than medically assisted suicide, and its focus on the motives of the suspect rather than those of the patient.
This week, lobbyists for euthanasia appeared to be winning people over to their way of thinking. The 71-year-old physicist Stephen Hawking gave an interview to the BBC in which he was asked whether he supported assisted suicide. “Those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those that help them should be free from prosecution ...” he replied. “But there must be safeguards that the persons concerned genuinely want to end their life and are not being pressurised into it, or having it done without their knowledge and consent.”
A Toronto man’s decision to end his life, simply because he felt it was time to die, has raised questions and concerns among family, friends and experts, some of whom say it could take the assisted suicide debate down a "slippery slope." John Alan Lee, a former professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, died in December. He had carefully planned his own death for months and discussed his decision with a CBC crew. "I can be satisfied," he told the CBC’s Duncan McCue when describing his life and the choice to end it. "I can say it’s been great. It’s enough."