Abstract During the Nazi era, so-called euthanasia programs were established for handicapped and mentally ill children and adults. Organized killings of an estimated 70,000 German citizens took place at killing centers and in psychiatric institutions. Nurses were active participants; they intentionally killed more than 10,000 people in these involuntary euthanasia programs. After the war was over, most of the nurses were never punished for these crimes against humanity-although some nurses were tried along with the physicians they assisted. One such trial was of 14 nurses and was held in Munich in 1965. Although some of these nurses reported that they struggled with a guilty conscience, others did not see anything wrong with their actions, and they believed that they were releasing these patients from their suffering.
Extract Discussion on physician autonomy at the 2014 and 2015 Canadian Medical Association (CMA) annual meetings highlighted an emerging issue of enormous importance: the contentious matter of freedom of conscience (FOC) within clinical practice. In 2014, a motion was passed by delegates to CMA’s General Council,and affirmed by the Board of Directors, supporting the right of all physicians, within the bounds of existing legislation, to follow their conscience with regard to providing medical aid in dying. The overwhelming sentiment among those in attendance was that physicians should retain the right to choose when it comes to matters of conscience related to end-of-life intervention. Support for doctors refusing to engage in care that clashes with their beliefs was reaffirmed in 2015. However, a registrar from a provincial college of physicians and surgeons is reported to have a differing perspective, stating “Patient rights trump our rights. Patient needs trump our needs.
Jan Bollen,Rankie Ten Hoopen, Dirk Ysebaert, Walther van Mook, Ernst van Heurn
Journal of Medical Ethics
Abstract Organ donation after euthanasia has been performed more than 40 times in Belgium and the Netherlands together. Preliminary results of procedures that have been performed until now demonstrate that this leads to good medical results in the recipient of the organs. Several legal aspects could be changed to further facilitate the combination of organ donation and euthanasia. On the ethical side, several controversies remain, giving rise to an ongoing, but necessary and useful debate. Further experiences will clarify whether both procedures should be strictly separated and whether the dead donor rule should be strictly applied. Opinions still differ on whether the patient’s physician should address the possibility of organ donation after euthanasia, which laws should be adapted and which preparatory acts should be performed. These and other procedural issues potentially conflict with the patient’s request for organ donation or the circumstances in which euthanasia (without subsequent organ donation) traditionally occurs.
Abstract Advocates of a right to die increasingly assert that the right in question is a positive right (a right to assistance in dying) and that the right in question is held against physicians or the medical community. Physician organizations often reply that these claims to a positive right to die should be rejected on the grounds that medicine’s aims or “internal” norms preclude physicians from killing patients or assisting their patients in killing themselves. The aim of this article is to rebut this reply. Rather than casting doubt on whether assisted dying is consistent with medicine’s “internal” norms, I draw attention to the socioeconomic contexts in which contemporary medicine is practiced. Specifically, contemporary medicine typically functions as a public cartel, one implication of which is that physicians enjoy a monopoly on the most desirable life-ending technologies (fast acting lethal sedatives, etc). While there may be defensible public health reasons for medicine functioning as a cartel and having this monopoly on desirable life-ending technologies, Rawlsian contract-based reasoning illustrates that the status of medicine as a cartel cannot be reconciled with its denying the public access to supervised use of desirable life-ending technologies. The ability to die in ways that reflect one’s conception of the good is arguably a primary social good, a good that individuals have reasons to want, whatever else they may want. Individuals behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance, unaware of their health status, values, etc, will thus reason that they may well have a reasonable desire for the life-ending technologies the medical cartel currently monopolizes. They thus have reasons to endorse a positive right to physician assistance in dying. On the assumption that access to desirable life-ending technologies will be controlled by the medical community, a just society does not permit that community to deny patients access to these technologies by an appeal to medicine’s putative “internal” aims or norms. The most natural response to my Rawlsian argument is to suggest that it only shows that individuals have a positive right against the medical community to access life-ending technologies but not a right to access such technologies from individual physicians. Individual physicians could still refuse to provide such technologies as a matter of moral conscience. Such claims of conscience should be rejected, however. A first difficulty with this proposal is that it is in principle possible for a sufficiently large number of individuals within a profession to invoke claims of conscience so as to materially hinder individuals from exercising their positive right to die, as appears to be the case in several jurisdictions with respect to abortion and other reproductive health treatments. Second, unlike conscientious objectors to military service, physicians who conscientiously object to providing assistance in dying would not be subject to fundamental deprivations of rights if they refused to provide assistance. Physicians who deny patients access to these technologies use their monopoly position in the service of a kind of moral paternalism, hoarding a public resource with which they have been entrusted so as to promote their own conception of the good over that of their patients.
Abstract Background: Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS) are highly debated upon particularly in the light of medical advancement and an aging society. Little is known about the professionals’ willingness to perform these practices particularly among those engaged in the field of palliative care and pain management. Thus a study was performed among those professionals.
Methods: An anonymous questionnaire was handed out to all participants of a palliative care congress and a pain symposium in 2013. The questionnaire consisted of 8 questions regarding end of life decisions. Proposed patient vignettes were used.
Results: A total of 470 eligible questionnaires were returned, 198 by physicians, 272 by nurses. The response rate was 64 %. The majority of professionals were reluctant to perform euthanasia or PAS: 5.3 % of the respondents would be willing to perform euthanasia on a patient with a terminal illness if asked to do so. The reluctance grew in case of a patient with a non-terminal illness. The respondents were more willing to perform PAS than euthanasia. Nurses were more reluctant to take action as opposed to the physicians. The majority of the respondents would attempt to treat the patient’s symptoms first before considering life-ending measures. As regards any decision making process the majority would consult with a colleague.
Conclusions: This is the first German study to ask about the willingness of professionals to take action as regards euthanasia and PAS without biased phrasing. As opposed to the general acceptance that is respectively high, the actual willingness to perform life-ending measures is low. The German debate on physician assisted suicide and its possible legalization should also incorporate clarifications regarding the responsibility who should eventually perform these acts.
Marianne C Snijdewind, Dick L Willems, Luc Deliens, Bregje D Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Kenneth Chambaere
JAMA Internal Medicine
Abstract Importance: Right to Die NL, an organization in the Netherlands that advocates for the option of euthanasia, founded the End-of-Life Clinic in 2012 to provide euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide for patients who meet all legal requirements but whose regular physicians rejected their request. Many patients whose requests are rejected have less common situations, such as a psychiatric or psychological condition, dementia, or being tired of living.
Objective: To study outcomes of requests for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide received by the clinic and factors associated with granting or rejecting requests.
Design: Analysis of application forms and registration files from March 1, 2012, to March 1, 2013, the clinic’s first year of operation, for 645 patients who applied to the clinic with a request for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide and whose cases were concluded during the study period. Main Outcomes and
Measures: A request could be granted, rejected, or withdrawn or the patient could have died before a final decision was reached. We analyzed bivariate and multivariate associations with medical conditions, type of suffering, and sociodemographic variables.
Results: Of the 645 requests made by patients, 162 requests (25.1%) were granted, 300 requests (46.5%) were refused, 124 patients (19.2%) died before the request could be assessed, and 59 patients (9.1%) withdrew their requests. Patients with a somatic condition (113 of 344 [32.8%]) or with cognitive decline (21 of 56 [37.5%]) had the highest percentage of granted requests. Patients with a psychological condition had the smallest percentage of granted requests. Six (5.0%) of 121 requests from patients with a psychological condition were granted, as were 11 (27.5%) of 40 requests from patients who were tired of living.
Conclusions and Relevance: Physicians in the Netherlands have more reservations about less common reasons that patients request euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, such as psychological conditions and being tired of living, than the medical staff working for the End-of-Life Clinic. The physicians and nurses employed by the clinic, however, often confirmed the assessment of the physician who previously cared for the patient; they rejected nearly half of the requests for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, possibly because the legal due care criteria had not been met.
Abstract The article opens with the hypothesis that the default position that should guide healthcare providers when treating patients at the end-of-life is that patients opt for life. In the absence of an explicit request to die, we may assume that patients wish to continue living. Thus, the role of the medical profession is to provide patients with the best possible conditions for continued living. The article makes a case for physician-assisted suicide legislation. It examines the ‘quality-of-life’ argument, and the issue of the patient’s autonomy and competence. It is argued that (1) quality-of-life is a subjective concept. Only the patient can conclude for herself that her quality-of-life is so low to warrant ending it, and that (2) only competent patients may request ending their lives. Patients’ lives should not be actively terminated by the medical team without the explicit consent of patients. The article then probes the role of physicians at the end-of-life, arguing that medicine should strive to cater to the wishes of all patients, not only the majority of them. Physicians should not turn their backs to justified requests by their patients. Physicians are best equipped to come to the help of patients at all stages of their illness, including their end-of-life. At the same time, in ending life, the final control mechanism should be with the patient. Thus, physician-assisted suicide is preferred to euthanasia in order to lower the possibility of abuse and of ending the lives of patients without their consent and against their wishes. As matters of life and death are grave, they should be taken with utmost seriousness, requiring the instalment of ample checks against abuse and facilitating mechanisms designed to serve the patient’s best interests. The article concludes with 19 careful and detailed guidelines for physician-assisted suicide. These are necessary measures designed to ensure that the best interests of the patients are served as they wished.
Extract In February 2015, Canada legalized physician-assisted dying — a first among countries with common-law systems, in which law is often developed by judges through case decisions and precedent. The Supreme Court of Canada issued the decision in Carter v. Canada, and its reasoning and implications for clinical practice bear examination.
Kenneth Chambaere, Robert Vander Stichele, Freddy Mortier, Joachim Cohen, Luc Deliens
New England Journal of Medicine
Extract We found an increased demand for euthanasia in Belgium between 2007 and 2013, as well as growing willingness among physicians to meet those requests, mostly after the involvement of palliative care services. This finding indicates that, after 11 years of experience, euthanasia is increasingly considered as a valid option at the end of life in Belgium.
Extract Once we have concluded that death is what is in the best interest of an infant, it is unreasonable not to bring about this death as painlessly and as much controlled in terms of timing by the parents as is feasible.
