For Wallonia region
Threats of prosecution for murder are a powerful way to dissuade doctors from killing relatives
This book would be a bargain at any price, but it is free to download from the website of Springer, the publisher of many medical journals: Euthanasia: Searching for the Full Story: Experiences and Insights of Belgian Doctors and Nurses. Euthanasia, though legal in Belgium, is opposed by some healthcare professionals. This collection of essays contains insights and […]
Every once in a while, a bioethics article appears which is so powerful an indictment of injustice that it sends shivers up the spines of its readers. In 1949 Leo Alexander published “Medical Science under Dictatorship” in the New England Journal of Medicine, about Nazi medicine. In 1966 Henry K. Beecher published “Ethics and Clinical Research”, […]
In northern latitudes the sound of spring begins with the booming of snow-covered ice cracking in frozen rivers. Is something like that happening in Belgium? Officials in the Belgian city of Leuven are investigating about ten euthanasia cases which may not have been done legally. The public prosecutor was tipped off by an anonymous letter to […]
On Monday, October, 13, Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge announced that the Dutch government will amend its euthanasia law to permit child euthanasia — an announcement that came only three days after the news that the issue of child euthanasia had divided the Netherlands coalition government. The NL Times reported that de Jonge said the new law […]
As the New Zealand euthanasia referendum approaches, voters could be helped by looking at the experience in other countries before making up their minds on this complex topic. At the end of July, Czechia became the latest country to reject the legalisation of euthanasia following similar rejections in Portugal and Finland. The opposition to the […]
Physicians and other healthcare professionals in the Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium who are willing to do late abortions would also support the legalisation of infanticide, according to a survey published in the journal Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica. “Almost nine out of ten respondents (89.1%) [who do late-term terminations] agree that in the event of a […]
Once again, the Belgian parliament is debating abortion – not whether to decriminalise it, for that happened in 1990, but whether to criminalise protests against it. A new bill would relax existing restrictions by allowing abortions up to 18 weeks (from 12 weeks), removing all penalties for women who do not comply with the law, […]
On Tuesday an historic trial commences in Belgium. It will be the first time that doctors have faced criminal charges over euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002. Three of them have been charged with illegal poisoning. If convicted, they face stiff prison sentences. The deceased was a 38-year-old woman, Tine Nys, who died in 2010. Three doctors […]
Belgian paralympian Marieke Vervoort died after euthanasia at the age of 40. Vervoort won gold and silver at the London 2012 Paralympics and another two medals at Rio 2016, had an incurable degenerative muscle disease. Vervoort had been preparing for euthanasia for a long time. In 2008 she completed all the paperwork. Despite her strength […]