I have written elsewhere about how the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in dangerous and unethical responses like ventilator rationing, unilateral DNRs, and some states ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. But the Covid-19 crisis has also spawned new ideas such as the American Clinicians Academy On Medical Aid in Dying’s policy […]
Coronavirus cases are now ‘soaring in care homes’, with around 2,200 care homes – one in seven – affected; Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has ‘disclosed that outbreaks had been identified in almost 100 institutions in the past 24 hours’; with an infection rate of 13.5 per cent among the UK’s 17,000 care homes […]
While the ongoing global shutdown of business is highly damaging to the economy and jobs, most world leaders have made the calculation that stopping the coronavirus is worth the economic turmoil and disruption to daily life. The risk of letting covid-19 spread through the population is simply too great, and they seem to be taking […]
Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, palliative care specialist Dr Kathryn Mannix urges people to talk about dying; from her experience, most ‘very sick people’ – ‘[f]rom teenagers to pensioners’ – although mostly ‘afraid that their illness and death will cast a shadow over the people they love’ find themselves ‘utterly unable to discuss this worry with […]
A GP surgery in South Wales is apologising for asking some patients ‘to complete a “do not resuscitate” form in case their conditions deteriorated due to coronavirus’; the letter from Llynfi Surgery in Maesteg ‘said that indicating they would not want to be resuscitated had “several benefits”’, informing them that ‘people with life-limiting illnesses who […]
The Royal College of Physicians in the UK has confirmed its opposition to the legalisation of euthanasia, saying the majority of doctors would be unwilling to participate in ending the lives of patients even if the law in Britain were to change. The confirmation comes following a legal challenge brought by four doctors who had […]
Spiked is an online blog whose writers regard themselves as proudly anti-establishment, but when it comes to abortion, they are all staunch supporters, from Ella Whelan declaring that abortion on the grounds of disability is not discrimination to Anne Furedi’s sycophantic praise for Andrew Cuomo’s New York law for abortion to birth for any reason. However, Spiked author Kevin Yuillis concerned about […]
The only specialised euthanasia clinic in the Netherlands has closed its doors during the coronavirus pandemic. The Euthanasia Expertise Center, formerly known as the End of Life Clinic (Levenseindekliniek), is located in The Hague and provides counselling and euthanasia services for patients whose GPs refuse to authorise euthanasia. According to its website, “In the interest of […]
A new study in the journal Clinical Ethics claims that permitting assisted dying would substantially benefit both those seeking assisted suicide and the public. Two Scottish academics, Dr David Shaw of the Universities of Basel and Maastricht, and Professor Alec Morton of the University of Strathclyde, posit three economic arguments: the cost to terminally-ill patients of a poor quality […]
Bedside gatherings at a Canadian euthanasia are normally an adults-only affair. But one doctor suggests that young children would benefit from becoming involved. In a blog entry at a University of British Columbia site, Dr Susan Woolhouse, who has been involved in some 70 “assisted deaths”, says “My past experiences during my palliative care rotations reassured […]
Germany’s highest court has overturned a ban on assisted suicide, introduced in 2015, which was ‘supposed to prevent anyone offering assisted sucide as a commercial venture’ while excempting from punishment ‘relatives or doctors who helped a single patient to die on a one-off basis’; the German constitutional court ruled that the ban meant those ‘offering […]
In September, in a case known as Truchon v Canada, Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Baudouin declared parts of both the federal and provincial laws on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) unconstitutional. Her judgement struck down the requirement in Canada’s euthanasia laws that death be reasonably foreseeable before euthanasia could take place. On Monday, the Canadian […]