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Experts warn Australians against following overseas experience with euthanasia

The practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide overseas has been a disaster, with so-called safeguards failing and doctor-assisted killing on the rise, and not just for the terminally ill, says world-renowned ethicist Professor Margaret Somerville...

read « When doctors are authorised to kill their patients, fundamental social values undergo tectonic shift »

With regard to euthanasia, Belgium plays a pioneering role, but that isn't to say that everything is in perfect order, says a group of ethicists and doctors.

The Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia ('La Commission fédérale de Contrôle et d'Évaluation de l'Euthanasie'; CFCEE) recently published its biannual report. Here we shall take the liberty of offering some criticism...

read « Can we still ask questions? »

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With this right – the right to die – we must take care not to obscure or forget the innate dignity of those who are vulnerable or reinforce an ideal that only an independent life has purpose and value. We are all fragile, and the vulnerability that comes with the passage from birth to death is one which we must each find a way to accept...

read « In assisted dying, remember this: We all are fragile »

For those tempted to the thought that a euthanasia or assisted suicide law, once passed, is cast in stone, never to be changed, recent events in Belgium should make you think again.

Not only has the statute been subject to continual re-interpretation to the point where euthanasia for psychological reasons is now taking place, the parliament has also debated and passed an amendment to the 2002 law only two years ago that removed the lower age limit to now include children. In light of further and more recent events, it seems that change may be just around the corner once again...

read « Crushing resistance - one clause at a time »

Though Belgium legalised euthanasia in 2002, eighteen years after the Netherlands (in 1984), it has now overtaken the Netherlands in numbers of deaths. There were 1,803 reported cases in 2013 (more than double the 822 reported cases in 2009). According to research conducted by Chambaere (see below) these official figures underreport euthanasia by around 50%. What is more worrying is that research indicates that more than 1,000 patients a year (1.7% of all deaths) have their lives ended deliberately without having requested it. This figure has not declined with time.

The Belgium law came to prominence recently with the decision in February 2014 to extend euthanasia to children. This has caused concern among clinicians and bioethicists in other countries...

read « Euthanasia in Belgium seen from abroad... »

by Raphael Cohen-Almagor (published in www.bioedge.org)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, is a world expert on euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium. He recently contributed an article to the JOurnal of Medical Ethics on one of the most worrying aspects of the euthanasia in Belgium—the deliberate shortening of lives of some patients without their explicit voluntary request. In this interview with BioEdge, he explains some of his concerns...

read « Foreigners do not understand us »

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing in response to a newspaper article regarding the young woman (24) named Laura...

read « Clive wants to talk to LAURA ! »