BioEdge: Assisted suicide has slow take-up in DC

BioEdge: Assisted suicide has slow take-up in DC



Saturday, April 14, 2018 

Mahatma Ghandi reputedly said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” We could paraphrase this in a contemporary context: a nation’s right-to-die laws are measured by how it treats the disabled.

Our lead story this week deals with the euthanasia of patients with an intellectual disability or autism in the Netherlands. Four bioethicists suggest that the necessary safeguards are lacking in these cases.

That is bad enough. But they go on to point out that the disabled have to deal with nigh-intolerable suffering for their whole lives. How does legal euthanasia make them feel? In the words of another author, “If society endorses the right of a person to seek physician assistance to end his or her life because of increasing loss of functional autonomy, what does that say about how our society values the lives of people who live with comparable limitations every day of their lives for years on end?”

Michael Cook Editor BioEdge

NEWS THIS WEEK

How do the Dutch respond to euthanasia requests from the intellectually disabled?

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Not with great insight or sensitivity, according to a recent study

Assisted suicide has slow take-up in DC

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Only two doctors have signed up

Wanted: ideologically sound Chinese sperm. Willing to pay top renminbi

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Must also love the socialist motherland

In post-one-child-policy China posthumous conception is a matter of desperation

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Grandparents sue to perpetuate bloodline

The contradictions of commercial surrogacy

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Why are the mothers left holding the baby if the parents walk?

CRISPR on the rampage

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

Especially in Chicago where a CRISPR gorilla runs amok

Are sperm counts declining around the world?

by Michael Cook | Apr 14, 2018

The fall appears to be strong and continuing

Macron encourages French bishops to speak out on bioethics

by Xavier Symons | Apr 14, 2018

Society needs to be reminded of the transcendent.

Tongue splitting, bodily harm, and human dignity

by Xavier Symons | Apr 14, 2018

Is there something wrong with consensual tongue splitting?

Are crisis pregnancy centres unethical?

by Xavier Symons | Apr 14, 2018

A recent article in the AMA Journal of Ethics says "yes".

IN DEPTH THIS WEEK

‘Right to try’ bills passed in US Congress: more harm than good?

by Patrick Foong | Apr 14, 2018

The FDA has a real role to play and should not be sidelined

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Assisted suicide has slow take-up in DC by Michael Cook | 14 Apr 2018 |       A year after assisted suicide was legalised in the District of Columbia, no one has taken advantage of it. Only two doctors in the US capital have indicated that they are willing to accept patients who want to receive lethal medications and only one hospital has allowed its doctors to participate. “It’s been exceptionally, exceptionally slow,” Kat West, national director of policy and programs for Compassion and Choices, told the Washington Post. “Especially in the first year, there’s usually a lot of interest in learning a lot about these laws. That, we think, has been really dampened and discouraged in D.C. because of these administrative rules.” Doctors are particularly reluctant to place their names on a government register, even if it is confidential. “They don’t want to be known as the doctor who gives out death prescriptions,” said Omega Silva, a retired doctor and a Compassion and Choices volunteer. According to the Post, no doctors testified in favour of the legislation when it was being debated, and several spoke against it. “Even those who say go ahead and pass the law — they don’t want to participate in it,” G. Kevin Donovan, the director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, an opponent of the law, told the Post. “They want other people to do it for other patients. It’s very difficult for a physician to directly send their patients to death because everything in their training is to try and do what’s good for their patients.”