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Briefing Note : 2022 Report Euthanasia Commission in Belgium
Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 11 min.
The European Institute of Bioethics provides a brief analysis on the Euthanasia Commission report in this document. Since 2002, 27.226 people have been officially euthanised in Belgium. The figures for the last two years (2020 and 2021) are 2.445 and 2.700 cases respectively. The year 2021 was therefore characterised by a 10.4% increase in declared euthanasia... Read more.
Belgium : a further extension of euthanasia
Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 1 min.
Based on texts which have already been submitted during the previous legislature, three further proposals (put forward by Mme Karin Jiroflée et al, sp.A), seeking to modify the law of May 28, 2002 on euthanasia, have just recently been laid before the Chamber of Belgian Deputies, without any specific deadline for their adoption having for the moment been defined. The first proposal (Doc 54 1013/001) aims to authorize the act of euthanasia for patients who are unable to express their wishes ...
Belgian Euthanasia Increases by 89% in four years.
Author / Source : European Institute for Bioethics Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 3 min.
The Act of 28 May 2002 concerning euthanasia stipulates that the Federal Committee on Oversight and Enforcement, shall biennially report to the legislature. Here is the sixth report, covering the years 2012-2013. The report comprises firstly a statistical element, which we note here that the number of reported euthanasia has almost doubled in four years (an increase of 89%), from 953 reported in 2010 to 1,807 in 2013 euthanasia. The Commission considers that this increase is due to the ...
Surrogate motherhood : a violation of human rights
Author / Source : European Centre for Law and Justice Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 41 min.
The commodification of the human body has been drawn into sharp focus over the last several years as issues such as human trafficking for organs and sexual servitude have gained international attention. Unfortunately, another form of trafficking has evaded the same level of attention and outrage of the international community: surrogacy motherhood. Surrogacy motherhood is a commodification of the human person: the child becomes the mere object of a convention, while the surrogate mother is...
What’s wrong with assisted dying
Author / Source : Iona Heath Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 5 min.
Campaigns in support of assisted dying seem to be predicated on an excessively rosy view of society and the individuals within it, says Iona Heath, writing in a personal capacity. Support for assisted dying is based on respect for individual autonomy, yet the influence that one person can have on another makes legislation to permit assisted dying intrinsically risky. The author is the president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, UK.
"Wrongful birth" : liability an indemnification
Author / Source : Fernand Keuleneer Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 10 min.
1. Both the Netherlands' Hoge Raad ("HR") and Germany's Bundesverfassungsgericht ("BVerfG") (Erster Senat) rendered in 1997 judgments concerning "wrongful birth" claims. In the Dutch case, a physician, at the occasion of a surgery, had removed a contraceptive implant and, without advising his patient, had not replaced it. In the first case before the BVerfG, a failed sterilization procedure carried out by a medical doctor who had been family planning counselor to the husband of plai...
Should grand-parents die?
Author / Source : Margaret Somerville Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 1 min.
"'Should the Grandparents Die?': Allocation of Medical Resources with an Aging Population" 14:3-4 Law, Medicine & Health Care 158-163. Reprinted in Martin Lyon Levine ed., The Elderly: Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare Policy, (October 2007), The International Library of Medicine, Ethics and Law, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1986
Biotechnology & the Human Spirit
Author / Source : Margaret Somerville Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 14 min.
Whether and when a child was conceived was largely a matter of chance (one could eliminate chance, of course, by not engaging in sexual intercourse, or reduce it by much less effective contraception than is available today). Where it was conceived was always in a woman's body. How life was transmitted to the child was through sexual reproduction. What genetic heritage the child received was determined by the natural recombination of the genes carried in the female parent's ovum and the male...
The ethical complexity of the Terry Schiavo case
Author / Source : Margaret Somerville Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 6 min.
Terry Schiavo is dead. The decision about withdrawing her feeding tube turned into a political circus and ideological battleground in which, for many participants, she was the pawn and victim through whom they could score points. Her most important legacy, however, is to show the complexity of decisions about whether a feeding tube on which life depends may be withdrawn. To respond ethically to individuals and to formulate ethical public policy to govern such cases, we must identify and...
Legalizing euthanasia. Why now?
Author / Source : Margaret Somerville Published on : Studies Temps de lecture : 1 min.
Professor in the Faculty of Medicine Founding Director of the Faculty of Law's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University Until very recently, all countries prohibited euthanasia.... Somerville, Margaret, Death Talk: The Case against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, McGill Queen's University Press; Montreal, 2001, pp 433. Chapter 6 reprinted in Wesley Cragg, Christine M. Koggel, Contemporary Moral Issues, 5th Ed., 2005.