Mandatory register of healthcare professionals in Spain who are conscientious objectors

The equalities minister of Spain, Irene Montero, has proposed the creation of a mandatory register of healthcare professionals who are conscientious objectors. This already exists for euthanasia.

The General Council of Official Medical Colleges (CGCOM) has declared that

“Forcing the conscience of physicians in order to expand the number of physicians available in all communities is, in addition to being unconstitutional, a bad solution, which from the perspective of the medical profession would be considered unacceptable, illegal, and unjust.”

Irene Montero, would like to see abortion decriminalised and says that

“the right of physicians to conscientious objection cannot be above women’s right to decide.”

House of Lords in danger of voting for assisted suicide

It cannot be said that the occupants of the UK’s House of Lords, elderly though they may be, are in danger of voting for assisted suicide in a fit of absence of mind. Over the past 20 years, 482,000 words have been spoken on the issue.

One of the most pertinent remarks in last week’s debate on Baroness Meacher’s bill was, to my surprise, made by a noble lord who has often featured in BioEdge, but as a fertility expert, Baron [Robert] Winston.

He said:

“It raises the most important moral question and needs clarity without euphemism. ‘Assisted dying’ could equally be applied to palliative care, so the Bill’s title does not represent what is really intended. The word ‘euthanasia’—from the Greek ‘eu’, meaning well or good, and ‘thanatos’, meaning death—is what we are actually talking about.”

Read about it at greater length in BioEdge’s lead story.> House of Lords debates assisted suicide—again

Michael Cook    

Decisions about your own death

Euthanasia is often described as the ultimate expression of autonomy but a former chair of the Danish Council of Ethics Ole Hartling stresses in his book Euthanasia and the Ethics of a Doctor’s Decisions: An Argument Against Assisted Dying, published by Bloomsbury that he does not rely upon “sanctity of life” arguments.

“These lines of thought are metaphysical and easily become dogmatic and hence unconvincing,”

he writes. His arguments are secular and aim to  show that legalisation is simply untenable.

In his essay in The BMJ, he writes:

Decisions about your own death are not made in normal day-to-day contexts. The wish to die arises against a backdrop: of desperation, a feeling of hopelessness, possibly a feeling of being superfluous. Otherwise, the wish would not be there. Thus, it is under these circumstances that the right to self-determination is exercised and the decision is made. Such a situation is a fragile basis for autonomy and an even more fragile basis for decision making. The choice regarding your own death is therefore completely different from most other choices usually associated with the concept of autonomy.

The essay is thought-provoking and well-worth reading.

Queensland legalises assisted dying

The Australian state of Queensland is the latest jurisdiction to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide. Nearly all of Australia now has access to “assisted dying”. In due course, someone will have to study why and how Queensland, a largely rural, socially conservative state with a substantial indigenous population, jumped on the bandwagon.

The final vote in the unicameral parliament was 61 to 30, so the bill passed easily. About 50 sensible amendments were proposed and debated and none of them succeeded.
All this suggests that the battle was lost long ago. Why? I don’t have a clear idea. Perhaps some of our readers may.

Michael Cook  of BioEdge

Belgium’s assisted dying guidelines

A new study claims that vague terminology in Belgium’s assisted dying guidelines is allowing scores of psychiatric patients to be euthanized.

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The worrying findings, published recently in the British Medical Journal Open, are based on a sample of 100 psychiatric patients in Belgium who requested euthanasia in the period 2007-2011.

Researchers found that most of the patients participating in the study had more than one diagnosed mental illness, with depression being the most common (59 patients) followed by split-personality disorder (50 patients).

Out of the 100 patients involved in the review, 48 had their euthanasia requests granted, and 35 carried it out. Among those remaining, 6 committed suicide, one died by palliative sedation, and one by anorexia.

The researchers are not disturbed by the thought of depressed patients being euthanized, but rather say the most pressing concern is to ensure individuals are compos mentis (of a sound mind):

“we wish to underline that each euthanasia request must be scrutinised as a request for effective and far-reaching treatment, and that any such request demands exploration of all implications and clarification of alternatives.”

“…A literature review made clear that the concept of ‘unbearable suffering’ has not yet been defined adequately, and that views on this concept are in a state of flux,” …

“It is generally accepted that this concept is considered to be subjective, dependent on personal values, and that it must be determined in the first place by the patient.”

Fifty-nine of the patients involved in the study were living alone.

– Xavier Symons

 

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Related articles

• Putting Suicidal Psychiatric Patients to Death is not Compassionate (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Euthanasia’s slippery slope (smh.com.au)
• Death watch (spectator.co.uk)
• Letter: Aid for Mentally Ill People (rss.nytimes.com)
• Physician assisted dying should be an election issue (thestar.com)
• Marion Co. Sheriff runs the largest mental illness facility in Indianapolis: the jail (fox59.com)
• Madness made me (aeon.co)
• Substance abuse, financial crisis increase risk of mental illness – Ndu (dailypost.ng)
• Aid for Mentally Ill People (nytimes.com)
• Euthanasia’s slippery slope (theage.com.au)