End of life

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.

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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.

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"'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

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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...

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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.

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ABSTRACT: The essay opens with some background information about the context of euthanasia in Belgium. It proceeds by discussing the Belgian law on euthanasia and concerns about the law, its interpretations and implementation. Finally, the major developments and controversies since the law came into effect are discussed. Suggestions as to how to improve the Belgian law and circumscribe the practice of euthanasia are made, urging Belgian legislators and the medical establishment to refl ect...

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We humans have always formed our most important values and sought meaning in life by weaving a metaphorical fabric around the two marker events of every human life, birth and death.  Our perceptions of birth, and the values traditionally attached to it, are being challenged and changed, however, by the new technoscience.  The “new genetics” debate is the context in which that is occurring.  There is also a companion debate about euthanasia focusing on the values that should govern death.  Whi...

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At a certain point, terminally ill patients — or their representatives — will decide not to continue treatment that has a goal of prolonging life, and to change to palliative treatment that has a primary goal of treating pain and suffering.  Note: this is a decision to change the nature of the treatment received and not a decision to cease treatment or an informed refusal of treatment.  In the past, it was not uncommon for physicians to say to dying patients, “There is nothing more we can do f...

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