Belgium looks at euthanasia for minors, Alzheimer's sufferers
Belgium is considering a significant change to its decade-old euthanasia law that would allow minors and Alzheimer's sufferers to seek permission to die.
AFP - Belgium is considering a significant change to its decade-old euthanasia law that would allow minors and Alzheimer's sufferers to seek permission to die.
The proposed changes to the law were submitted to parliament Tuesday by the Socialist party and are likely to be approved by other parties, although no date has yet been put forward for a parliamentary debate.
"The idea is to update the law to take better account of dramatic situations and extremely harrowing cases we must find a response to," party leader Thierry Giet said.
The draft legislation calls for "the law to be extended to minors if they are capable of discernment or affected by an incurable illness or suffering that we cannot alleviate."
Belgium was the second country in the world after the Netherlands to legalise euthanasia in 2002 but it applies only to people over the age of 18.
Socialist Senator Philippe Mahoux, who helped draft the proposed changes, said there had been cases of adolescents who "had the capacity to decide" their future.
He said parliamentarians would also consider extended mercy-killing to people suffering from Alzheiner's-type illnesses.
Euthanasia was allowed to an Alzheimer's patient for the first time in the Netherlands last year.
Exactly how does a minor or an person with Alzheimer's disease make an informed request to be killed?
Apparently ordinary comfort care-- love and analgesia and human dignity-- are not adequate responses to "dramatic situations and extremely harrowing cases."
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France is getting impatient with the weak and dying, too:
Report recommends France legalize 'accelerated deaths'
AFP - France should allow doctors to "accelerate the coming of death" for terminally ill patients, a report to President Francois Hollande recommended Tuesday.
Hollande referred the report to a national council on medical ethics which will examine the precise circumstances under which such steps could be authorised with a view to producing draft legislation by June 2013.
"The existing legislation does not meet the legitimate concerns expressed by people who are gravely and incurably ill," Hollande saidThe French report sounds a bit less-- how to say it-- Teutonic than the Belgian snuff-fest. The authors of the report explicitly condemn active euthanasia, but such condemnations, in my view, are often a patina of humanism that covers a much darker agenda. The report does endorse 'withdrawal of nourishment', which is just murder by starvation and dehydration of a handicapped person.
And precisely what starving someone to death has to do with a report on 'medical care' is not specified. I must have missed the classes on "how to deliberately starve patients" in med school. Glad I missed it. The practical exam would have been particularly unpleasant.
Connecticut. Belgium. France. 2012 is closing out to be a banner year for the Culture of Death.
I think there were a lot of things you missed in medical school: how to evaluate evidence, how to admit error, the theory of evolution, how to treat people, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteIf I develop Alzheimer's, I would be glad to sign a paper saying I could be euthanized once I become unmanageable. Since you evidently know little about Alzheimer's, I hereby inform you that there can be a very long interval between initial diagnosis and the inability to make decisions.
Thanks for the information, Doctor.
DeleteAnd there's one thing I did learn in med school that you are still having trouble with-- writing my name, anonymouse.
Michael,
DeleteWell, the only thing you have going for your credibility, your authority, is attaching your name and your qualifications as a practicing neurosurgeon.
Everything else your write lacks credibility. No one would take the slightest notice of it otherwise.
It's true that a person with Alzheimer's might have given permission to be euthanized years before. It's also true that Terri Schiavo signed no such document and she was still killed. Several years after she slipped into a coma her husband, who was then living with another woman with whom he had fathered children, declared that Terri would want to be killed. He then called numerous witnesses who testified to the same, though her parents believed otherwise.
DeleteThus began a nasty court battle to discern her wishes. In the end the court decided that she would want to be killed. The fact that she had signed no such document didn't matter.
Now, tell me--how does a minor consent to euthanasia?
JQ
This is how they talk you into going down that dark path that you know you shouldn't go down. They don't tell you where you're going. In fact, they deny they're bringing you there. And yet they lead you that way, step by step.
DeleteDon't worry, we're not going to kill grandma. Okay, we will but not without her written permission. Okay, we will kill her without written permission, but only if loved ones testify that she would want to be killed. Okay, we will kill her without written permission and without the testimony of loved ones...and so on.
Little John
@Little John:
DeleteYou're right. I've dealt with the pro-death crowd professionally. A dissembling sinister bunch. Very scary.