Guest post by Udo Schuklenk We should not prevent some depressed people from access to assisted dying. Deborah E Gray, whose depression is (according to her account) successfully managed today, describes vividly on her website the impact depression had on her. She writes: you don’t feel hopeful or happy about anything in your life. You’re crying a […]
Category: Life and Death
Is Age a Determinant Variable in Forgoing Treatment Decisions at the End of Life?
Guest post by Sandra Martins Pereira, Roeline Pasman and Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen Decisions to forgo treatment are embedded in clinical, socio-cultural, philosophical, religious, legal and ethical contexts and beliefs, and they cannot be considered as representing good or poor quality care. Particularly for older people, it is sometimes argued that treatment is aggressive, and that there may […]
Child Euthanasia: Should We Just not Talk about It?
Guest Post by Luc Bovens In 2014 Belgium passed a law that extends its euthanasia legislation to minors. There were strong parliamentary majorities in favour of this law but nonetheless a scream of “Murderers!” was heard in the public galleries of the Chamber of Representatives. What is the opposition like in Belgium? Euthanasia for adults has […]
The Death of Sidaway: Values, Judgments and Informed Consent
Guest post by Kirsty Keywood (University of Manchester) On 11th March Nadine Montgomery won her case before the UK Supreme Court to gain compensation for the failure of her obstetrician to warn her of risks associated with the vaginal delivery of a large infant – a risk which she would have averted by requesting a […]
Does Religion Deserve a Place in Secular Medicine?
By Brian D. Earp The latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is out, and in it, Professor Nigel Biggar—an Oxford theologian—argues that “religion” should have a place in secular medicine (click here for a link to the article). Some people will feel a shiver go down their spines—and not only the non-religious. After […]
Physicians and Euthanasia: What about Psychiatric Illness, Dementia and Weltschmerz?
Guest Post by Eva Bolt In the Netherlands, requests for euthanasia are not uncommon. A physician who grants a request for euthanasia in the Netherlands is not prosecuted if the criteria for due care (described in the Euthanasia Act) are met. An example of one of these criteria is the presence of unbearable suffering without […]
Strange Happenings in Belgium
There’s a part of me that recognises this story as having been in the news before – but I don’t think I’ve written on it, so here we go. It’s from the Telegraph, under the headline “Son Challenges Belgian Law after Mother’s ‘Mercy Killing’” – which is a reasonably pithy summation of what’s at issue. A […]
Free Speech and the CMF
Despite a slight reticence when it comes to quoting Mill approvingly, I do have to admit that sometimes he does articulate a thought clearly and pithily, and sometimes it’s a thought in which all right-thinking people ought to see the merit. Like, for example, this, from the opening paragraph of chapter III in On Liberty: An opinion […]
Would the Falconer Bill Increase the Suicide Rate?
This is just a quickie – I promise. A tweet this morning from Kevin Yuill raises what he sees as a scary prospect: The Falconer bill will treble suicides amongst the terminally ill, according to Dignity in Dying. Is that what we want? Reject this bill. He bases his claim on two things, both from […]
Adrenaline, Information Provision and the Benefits of a Non-Randomised Methodology
Guest Post by Ruth Stirton and Lindsay Stirton, University of Sheffield One of us – Ruth – was on Newsnight on Wednesday the 13th August talking about the PARAMEDIC2 trial. The trial is a double blind, individually randomised, placebo controlled trial of adrenaline v. normal saline injections in cardiac arrest patients treated outside hospital. In simpler terms, if […]