A research team of the VUB (Brussels Free University), headed by professor Lieve de Bock, explored the relation between the care provided in the final three months of life and the prevalence and types of end of life decisions in Belgium. It concerned a two year nationwide retrospective study.
The English summary of RELEVANT 2010-1, the quarterly NVVE, Dutch RtD magazine, has been published and can be read as PDF by clicking here.
Toronto’s edition of Thestar.com reported in December 2009 (for the article click here) on an original campaign for dignified dying: park bench stickers, to commemorate the “bad deaths” of a number of people, at the same time inviting readers to visit their website www.dignityindeath.com.
According to a recent Angus Reid poll the proportion of supporters for legal euthanasia (now 42%) has dropped by three points, while the proportion of opponents (now 36%) has increased by 4 points, since august 2009.
Susan Bracken, a member of the Right to Die Society of Canada has published a novel that incorporates the issue of assisted dying within a framework of universal fiction themes: the protagonist overcomes neglect and abuse in her young life to achieve riches and fame and she finds true love.
On February 1 this year, BBC 1 broadcasted the Richard Dimbleby Lecture “Shaking Hands With Death” by famous author Terry Pratchet. In this lecture Pratchet – himself being diagnosed with [early] Alzheimer – made a plea for a “pre-assistance assessment” by tribunals, a system used in the UK in other sensitive situations.
In the book “Redeemer under God”, recently published by researcher Anne-Mei The, Els Borst was quoted as having said that she may have made a mistake… and… now says it was brought in ‘far too early’. Without elaborating, she admitted that medical care for the terminally-ill had declined since the law came into effect.
Mrs Borst herself rebutted the assumptions in a letter to the editor of a Dutch paper (NRC).
Two researchgroups from Belgium and the Netherlands (the End-of-life Care Research Group from VU Brussels and the EMGO VUmc Amsterdam group) published a theoretical study into the practice of End-of-Life Consultation Services, developped in both countries: Establishing specialized health services for professional consultation in euthanasia: experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium.
A Belgian Bookshop (ACCO) is selling the e-version of an English book from Heleen Weijers on the Dutch Euthanasia law.
WFRtDS Newsletter 57 can be downloaded here.
The quarterly Magazine of the NVVE, Relevant 2009-4, is released.You can read the English Summary by clicking here
A new book, published by Anne-Mei The, a well known Dutch lawyer, anthropologist and writer on these
