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Dutch paediatricians back right to die for under 12s
http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-paediatricians-back-die-under-12s-150713269.html
The Hague (AFP) - Terminally ill children in unbearable suffering should be given the right to die, the Dutch Paediatricians Association said on Friday, urging the suppression of the current 12-year age limit.
"We feel that an arbitrary age limit such as 12 should be changed and that each child's ability to ask to die should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis," said Eduard Verhagen, paediatrics professor at Groningen University who is on the association's ethics commission.
Children in the Netherlands aged 12 or over can request euthanasia if they are terminally ill, suffering unbearably, able to express their will and have parental approval.
"If a child under 12 satisfies the same conditions, paediatricians are currently powerless," said Verhagen. "It's time to address this problem."
Dutch paediatricians want a commission to be set up to examine the question further.
Stephen Hawking, a sufferer of motor neuron disease, admitted in 2015 that he would consider assisted suicide if he had nothing more to contribute and was a burden to those around him.
He described keeping somebody alive against their wishes as 'the ultimate' form of 'indignity'.
A growing number of people support doctor assisted dying, yet it remains illegal in all but a few countries.
Helen Joyce, international editor of The Economist, joins Phillip Adams to discuss this controversial subject.
Dr Nitschke is understandably emotional and his language presumably reflects that. He is not apologetic and is taking an aggressive stance in response. He probably feels the need to do so, given how little support he seems to be receiving.
California will become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives using doctor-prescribed drugs after Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday he signed one of the most emotionally charged bills of the year.
Brown, a lifelong Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian, announced he signed the legislation after thoroughly considering all opinions and discussing the issue with many people, including a Catholic bishop and two of Brown's doctors.
"In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death," the governor wrote in a signing statement that accompanied his signature on the legislation. "I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain. I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill.
He added he wouldn't deny that right to others.
California Governor Signs Hard-Won Right-to-Die Legislation
A couple of centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote that death and taxes were the only certain things in this world ”” perfectly capturing the dual pressures now bearing down on Canada's new government.Not only must Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers come up with their first budget by the end of this month, but the Liberal Government is also being forced to produce a law in the next few weeks to permit medically assisted death.
The deadline for an assisted-death law comes from Canada's Supreme Court, which ruled in January that the country's parliament had to have legislation passed and in force by June.
By the time the Northern Hemisphere summer rolls around, Canada will join a handful of nations where citizens have recognised legal rights to die with dignity.
Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands currently have that right, as well as citizens in several American states.
Australia has no such law, but the debate has been revived in recent months by Andrew Denton and his 17-part podcast, Better Off Dead.
If Denton's advocacy does prod Australia into dealing with the right-to-die issue, Canada's emerging law could set down some significant signposts to follow.
Melbourne doctor Rodney Syme could lose his medical licence and face criminal charges if he defies regulatory authorities and proceeds to help a 70-year-old man end his life.
Dr Syme promised to give Bernard Erica, who has terminal cancer, the lethal and illegal drug Nembutal for him to take at a time of his own choosing.
The Medical Board of Australia held an urgent hearing last month and found that Dr Syme posed a serious risk to Mr Erica and ruled the doctor was not to give any end-of-life advice or care to people.
The 80-year-old euthanasia advocate told Australian Story his options were to abide by the Medical Board, or help Mr Erica and face the consequences.
Dr Syme promised months ago to give Nembutal to Mr Erica, who has tongue and lung cancer.
The Medical Board found there were also serious risks when Dr Syme was not consulting with the rest of Mr Erica's team of treating practitioners.
It warned Dr Syme that "any action that results in the intentional death of a person may be a criminal offence".
In Victoria, assisting another person to suicide carries a five-year prison sentence.
"I will not desert Bernard, I will continue to support him in every way that I can. Just how that pans out remains to be seen," Dr Syme said.
"At this stage, I haven't decided what I will do, but it'll be a huge battle with my conscience to do anything other than what I have been doing.
"I believed that providing him with my support and advice, and in particular, medication, would be the best palliative care that I could provide."
California Gov. Jerry Brown signed landmark legislation last October that would allow terminally ill people to request life-ending medication from their physicians.
But no one knew when the law would take effect, because of the unusual way in which the law was passed ”” in a legislative "extraordinary session" called by Brown. The bill could not go into effect until 90 days after that session adjourned.
The session closed Thursday, which means the End of Life Option Act will go into effect June 9.
"We're glad to finally have arrived at this day where we have a date certain," says Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel.
"It's a historic achievement for California, and for a limited universe of people dealing with a terminal illness," Monning says. "It could indeed be a transformative way of giving them the option of a compassionate end-of-life process."
Disability-rights advocates fought hard last year against passage of the legislative act, and they continue to voice concern.
Marilyn Golden, senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, says it would be impossible to know, for example, if a depressed patient went to many doctors ”” who all denied the request for lethal medication ”” before finding one who agreed to write the prescription.
"We are looking ahead at measures to protect people from abuse," Golden says, "and to explore and inform doctors, nurses and pharmacists that they don't have to participate."
As written, the law requires two doctors to agree, before prescribing the drugs, that a patient has six months or less to live. Patients must be able to swallow the medication themselves and must affirm in writing, 48 hours before taking the medication, that they will do so.
California is the fifth state to permit this option at the end of life. It joins Vermont, Oregon, Washington and Montana.
'Absurd': Bob Hawke blasts lack of political will to legalise euthanasia - April 14, 2016
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...l-to-legalise-euthanasia-20160413-go5w9u.html
..."It's just an unarguable case," Mr Hawke told ABC Radio National on Thursday.
He said there were no ethical grounds for forcing people in terrible pain to "suffer and suffer and suffer" on quasi-religious moral grounds.
"I can see no logical or moral basis for such an absurd position."...
The major parties are not touching it, but Vote Compass results show Australians are overwhelmingly in favour of allowing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill.
"Euthanasia is still the great untouched issue," ABC election analyst Antony Green told Lateline.
"It's one of the issues which cuts across party alignment, cuts across party positions and falls into that category of moral issues ”” euthanasia, homosexuality, abortion ”” they're issues in which there's generally a conscience vote on, there isn't a party line on."
If legislation on euthanasia were introduced in Parliament, Labor and the Greens have previously suggested they would allow their members a conscience vote.
Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio last year that end-of-life laws were "fraught with practical difficulties and of course fraught with very significant moral difficulties", and that it was a legislative issue for the states.
"It's easy to say that people shouldn't suffer in their last days. It's easy to have that opinion," Green said.
"It's much harder to legislate and it's much harder to legislate the safeguards."
It's now legal for doctors and other healthcare providers in Canada to help patients die.
The federal government missed its June 6 deadline to implement its assisted death legislation, Bill C-14, so provinces across Canada are taking things into their own hands when it comes to regulating how and when people can end their own lives.
Canada joins other jurisdictions such as The Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, all of which have their own rules around doctor-assisted suicide.
Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins announced Monday that drugs used to assist deaths will be available free of charge in the province, and that a referral service connecting patients with doctors willing to provide the service is being created. Over the last few months, numerous people in Ontario and across the country have been granted permission by provincial courts to die ahead of the federal government's new law.
A spokesperson for the minister told VICE News that the referral service will be a phone line patients can call if their current doctor is unwilling to help them die. The names of willing doctors will not be made public because of "security concerns in putting a list like that out."
After weeks of debate, Canadian lawmakers have passed legislation to legalize physician-assisted death.
That makes Canada "one of the few nations where doctors can legally help sick people die," as Reuters reports.
The new law "limits the option to the incurably ill, requires medical approval and mandates a 15-day waiting period," as The Two-Way has reported.
The Canadian government introduced the bill in April and it passed a final Senate vote Friday. It includes strict criteria that patients must meet to obtain a doctor's help in dying. As we have reported, a patient must:
- "Be eligible for government-funded health care (a requirement limiting assisted suicides to Canadians and permanent residents, to prevent suicide tourism)."
- "Be a mentally competent adult 18 or older."
- "Have a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability."
- "Be in an 'advanced state of irreversible decline,' with enduring and intolerable suffering."
As a safeguard, the law also requires that two independent witnesses be present when the patient signs a request for a doctor-assisted death.
A heated debate emerged over whether to require patients to prove that their "natural death has become reasonably foreseeable," as the law reads.
Some lawmakers wanted to broader eligibility criteria that would include degenerative diseases, Reuters reports. "The key amendment that senators had been pushing for was to broaden the criteria for who qualifies for assisted dying," reporter Dan Karpenchuk tells our Newscast unit. "They had insisted that it includes suffering Canadians who are not close to death."
Ultimately, the senators dropped the amendment and adopted the bill with the more restrictive language – but Dan says the law will likely be challenged in courts. He adds:
"Some senators say [the law] is immoral, adding that there could be people facing years of excruciating suffering, but not yet close to death. And in launching expensive legal challenges many who are desperately ill and their families could go broke from court cases to determine if they have the right to an assisted death."
JUNE 24, 2017
Euthanasia survey hints at support from doctors, nurses and division
James Robertson -SMH, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/euthanasi...among-doctors-and-nurses-20170624-gwxspn.html
Most NSW doctors and nurses support a controversial medical euthanasia bill headed for Parliament, according to research that could prompt new debate about the medical fraternity's willingness to accept changes to assisted suicide laws.
A bill, to allow patients to apply for medically assisted euthanasia in specific circumstances when older than 25 (an age when informed consent is deemed reached), will be introduced to the NSW upper house in August for a conscience vote. ......
The only benefit to legalisation (or decriminalisation) is that it promotes greater consultation between treatment teams (and possibly families) without the risk of legal action. From memory I believe studies have shown that the rate of euthanasia in the Netherlands decreased following decriminalisation and may in fact be less than in countries in which euthanasia is not decriminalised. However I reiterate that doctors in Australia have enough legal protection to act humanely and in the best interests of their patients.
In response to Nioka's post I am sorry to hear that her grandmother sufferred as she did. Every case must be treated on an individual basis. I will not comment on your grandmothers situation as I simply do not know enough.
Essentially all cases are very complex. I would like to think in this day we would treat any persons pain effectively and keep them comfortable. Manage any psychological problems. Have infrastructure and services in place to care for them without giving her any suggestion that she is a burden on society. If they still wished to bring upon their death quicker they could request life sustaining measures etc. be ceased (which includes nutrition).
Our understanding of pain and acknowledgment of it has improved greatly over the last 1 to 2 decades. Gone are the days when pain was expected and to be endured until it subsides. Pain is treated promptly and often without question (unless drug seeking is possibly). Studies have shown that if acute pain is treated effectively the development of chronic pain (and the psychological component that makes it much worse) is much less.
Another point that is often overlooked is who will perform the act of euthanasia if it is legalised? Would there be specialists (maybe euthanologists). You must remember that while some doctors are more altruistic than others, all (well I hope all) entered medicine with the aim to help people. The hippocratic oath itself states "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect". I for one did not get into this profession to perform such acts or have it expected of me to do so.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/a...g/news-story/b8c43157086aaa2c415e1e25f8ad57b0
VICTORIANS SLEEPWALK TO EUTHANASIA: KILLING PEOPLE TO STOP THEM DYING
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
October 19
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