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Many advocates and advocating Societies for the Right to Choose at the end op life know of the existence of parties which defend the opposite.

While originally suggesting (and even proposing a bill with a ban on some RtD Societies) tightening of the assisted suicide laws in order to limit the so-called “death tourism”, Justice Minister  Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said in a Sonntagszeitung interview, that the law should not only be for terminally ill people, but also for the chronically ill.

The Dutch Euthanasia Review Committees finally published their 2009 Annual Report. The media, both nationally and internationally, already published some numbers out of this then unpublished report.

UPDATE, DWDV’s  newsletter, edition Winter 2010 is now available by clicking here

Emeritus Professor John Willoughby of Australia kindly offered to produce a monthly selection from PubMed.  This month selection can be found here.

DWD Canada published its June 2010 Newsletter The Voice, to be read by clicking here.

More than a year after the start of the prosecution of Mr. Rees and Dr. Michael Irwin because of their assistance to Mr Raymond Cutkelvin to have his assisted suicide realised at Dignitas in Switzerland, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) announced he would take no further action to both.

The German Bundes Ärzte Kammer (BAK) asked the Allensbach Intsitut für Demoskopie to organize a new survey on the opinion of German doctors about Ärztlich begleiteter Suizid und aktive Sterbehilfe (physician assisted suicide and euthanasia). This as a response to the “shocking” results of a similar survey in 2008. The outcome was the same: the issue of termination of life is more than once discussed in doctor-patient relations.

In June 2010 Justice Kouralis of the South Australian Supreme Court made a judicial decision handing down a landmark in the development of end-of-life discussions: he reconfirmed the right of a competent person to refuse medical treatment and to refuse food and fluid. He indicated that carers not only must abide by such decision, but do have a duty to provide oral hygiene to palliate pain and discomfort in such cases.

Attorney General Lara Giddings of Tasmania announced earlier this month a number of plans for (progressive) law reform in the next four year period of Labour-Green Government. These plans included a private members bill for legalization of euthanasia to be brought to Parliament late next year.

In June an Australian paper (www.theage.com) reported about the findings of a Belgian survey on the role of nurses in physician assisted deaths in Belgium. By using the wrong words they suggested a huge misbehaviour of Belgian doctors and nurses: 50% of all euthanasia-cases were non-voluntary, and 20% of all nurses had been involved in non-voluntary euthanasia cases.

As of July 1, 2010 a new guidance for doctors by the UK General Medical Council “Treatment and care towards the end of life; good practice in decision making” has come into effect.