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Zoe Fitzgerald Carter – a Columbia School of Journalism graduate – lives with her husband and two daughters in California. Her busy everyday life is disturbed when her mother Margaret informs her one day about her wish to “end things”. Margaret no longer wishes to live with her Parkinson and starts making arrangements. One of those is that she wants her three daughters “to be there when she does it”.

Sociologists Ellen Verbakel (Tilburg University) and Eva Jansen (Nijmegen University) performed a study to explore explanations for the approval of euthanasia by assessing the differences among individuals and countries.

On June 30, 2010 Adelbert Josephus Jitta passed away. He died at the age of 71 in dignity, making use of the law of which he may be called one of the founding fathers.

The English summary of the summer edition of NVVE’s magazine Relevant can now be seen here.

WFRtDS Newsletter 58 can be downloaded here.

South Australia keeps trying to move forward in legalizing euthanasia. This time Independent MP Bob Such introduced his Private Member’s Bill in the House of Assembly. ABC News reports about it.

In this edition you may find – amongst other information –  useful information on the forthcoming WF congres in Melbourne in October this year. To read it click here.

Hilary Young, a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, in a Letter to the Editor of the Ottawa Citizen refutes the many  times (mis)used argument of “slippery slope”.

In a radio debate with German Emergency Head Dr Michael de Ridder (see news item on April 15, 2010 on this site) on the occasion of the appearance of De Ridder’s  book, Dr Hoppe, President of the Deutsche Ärztekammer (the National Doctors Organisation) , made a sensational statement taking a more relaxed position on physician-assisted suicide than he has conveyed in the past.

May 12, 2010: Researchers of the VUmc Amsterdam centre performed a qualitative study in physicians and patients on the use of Advanced Euthanasia Directives (AED) in cases of dementia. This was published in the Dutch Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (2010;154:A1273).

Dr Michael Irwin, a retired general practitioner, wants to make a test case out of his assistance in helping someone to commit suicide three years ago. By writing Keir Starmer, UK’s DPP, he effectively is inviting criminal charges within weeks, for which the former GP could be jailed for up to 14 years.

The second reading on Canada’s bill C-384 to permit assisted suicide under strict conditions has resulted in a rejection, Wednesday April 21, 2010. The margin was 228 – 59.