The chairman of a Dutch suicide support group has been given a prison sentence and his organisation fined in a test ruling that highlights that doctors alone can assist suicide in the Netherlands. Gerard Schellekens, of the Foundation for a Voluntary Life (SVL), helped an 80 year old woman, who was bedridden with advanced Parkinson’s disease commit suicide after the GP at her nursing home refused euthanasia.
But there is evidence that some clinicians may already be using continuous deep sedation (CDS), as a form of "slow euthanasia". Research suggests use of CDS in Britain is particularly high - accounting for about one in six of all deaths.
Proponents of assisted suicide believe support for legalisation is growing among lawmakers and the public around the world. In the past year three names have been added to the list of places which permit it. The BBC's Vincent Dowd investigates whether assisted suicide is set to become even more common.
The Dutch system designed to protect from prosecution doctors who are involved in the mercy killing of severely ill newborn babies who are judged to be suffering unbearably and hopelessly seems to be struggling to gain professional acceptance. The first case is only now being considered, more than two years after the system’s introduction. Research had estimated there should be 15 to 20 such cases a year (New England Journal of Medicine 2005;352:959-62). MPs learnt through parliamentary questions on 18 November that the first report of the decision to end the life of a severely ill baby had been filed in the Netherlands. No more details have been released. The expert committee set up to monitor the system has 12 weeks to decide if the doctor involved followed the correct protocol and whether it should recommend that he or she is not prosecuted.
HEALTHY, elderly people who are simply ''tired of living'' could be allowed to end their lives with a lethal injection under new euthanasia laws being debated by the Dutch parliament. MPs will discuss the proposals after campaigners collected more than 100,000 signatures in support. The influential Dutch ''Right to Die'' campaign, which has been active since 1973, has proposed training non-medical staff to administer a lethal injection to healthy people over the age of 70 who ''consider their lives complete''. Under the new ''vrijwillig levenseinde'', or ''of free will'', plans, the suicide assistants would be certified and would be required to make sure that patients were not temporarily depressed and had a ''heartfelt and enduring desire'' to die.
A Dutch doctor who exploited vulnerable people with multiple sclerosis by charging them thousands of pounds for unproven stem cell treatments has been banned from practice in the UK by the General Medical Council. Robert Trossel, 56, who practised in London and Rotterdam, gave “false hope and made unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims to patients suffering from degenerative and devastating illnesses,” said GMC fitness to practise panel chairman Brian Gomes da Costa. The panel held that Dr Trossel’s misconduct was “fundamentally incompatible with being a doctor” and ordered that his name be erased from the UK medical register with immediate effect.
A public policy think tank, which aims to promote “rational, evidence-based and measured debate” on the subject of assisted dying, has been launched by two members of the House of Lords. Lord Alex Carlile and Baroness Ilora Finlay, co-chairs of Living and Dying Well, have both fervently opposed any change in the law on this issue. Their new organisation is neither “neutral” nor “a campaigning pressure group,” instead, they want to present “hard evidence” to parliament and the public in an objective and informative manner.
Artsen moeten na het melden van euthanasie steeds vaker lang wachten op een oordeel van de regionale toetsingscommissie euthanasie. De KNMG roept VWS op om te garanderen dat vanaf 2012 de wettelijke toegestane termijn niet meer wordt overschreden. Artsen verkeren na het melden van euthanasie steeds vaker onnodig lang in onzekerheid over de uitkomst van de toetsing van hun euthanasiemelding. Tot 2007 was de wachttijd zo'n 30 dagen, maar de wettelijke termijn van maximaal twee keer zes weken wordt steeds forser overschreden. Dit loopt soms op tot meer dan een half jaar, zo hoort de KNMG van artsen. Een reportage in actualiteitenprogramma EenVandaag laat zien dat veel artsen dit probleem ervaren.
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.
Een 61-jarige man uit Lelystad krijgt geen straf voor het helpen bij het beeïndigen van het leven van zijn vrouw eind 2011. De vrouw had haar echtgenoot uitdrukkelijk verzocht om haar te helpen bij haar keuze voor euthanasie. Het bleef bij een poging omdat de man zijn vrouw niet met een kussen wilde laten stikken. De vrouw maakte in mei 2012 zelf alsnog een einde aan haar leven.
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."