Dutch euthanasia cases
Two recent test cases in the Netherlands have helped to clarify the distinction between murder and palliative care. In the first, the Dutch Supreme Court rejected an appeal by an Amsterdam GP, Dr Wilfred van Oijen against a charge of murder. He had an 84- year-old patient in a coma who was expected to die within 48 hours. He injected 50 mg of alcuronium and soon afterwards she died. Dr van Oijen’s defence was that this “help with dying” was palliative care. However, the Supreme Court rejected this argument. Because the patient was in coma, she was not suffering, and because she had not requested euthanasia, his “life-ending treatment” was murder. He was sentenced to one week in prison suspended for two years.
In the other case, a junior hospital doctor was acquitted after he increased the dose of morphine administered to a dying patient with breathing difficulties. As the patient’s condition worsened, the doctor gave him midazolam and shortly thereafter he died. The doctor was arrested. The Supreme Court found that the drugs he used could shorten a patient’s life, but in this case the doctor did not intend to do so.
- Prescribe morning-after pills to young teenagers, say US pediatric group - November 30, 2012
- Bahrain sentences protest docs to prison - November 28, 2012
- Terry Pratchett assisted suicide documentary wins International Emmy - November 27, 2012
More Stories
Mortality rates for American kids are rising for the first time in 50 years
US President Joe Biden is so concerned about the future of American children that he inserted a mandate for affordable...
Will Pope Francis be composted?
Will Pope Francis be composted instead of buried in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with his predecessors? It’s unlikely. But...
The virtues and the vices of the outrageous
A Norwegian bioethicist, Anna Smajdor, recently set out a case for “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – using the wombs of...
More than 200 people have been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies
Scientists believe that CRISPR gene editing technologies will transform medicine. But how many people have been treated so far? According...
Asia-Pacific IVF market could reach US$46 billion by 2031
According to a market survey by Allied Market Research, IVF is booming in the Asia-Pacific region. The market size was...
Third global summit on human genome editing: Moving on after the He experiment
The much anticipated Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing was held in London earlier this month to explore the...