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In July this year the Swiss Commission on bioethics issued a report on assisted suicide with a number of recommendations.

The Swedish Society RTVD (Right to Die with Dignity), which was founded in 1974, currently has some 2,500 members. This does not however reflect the fact that a considerably larger number of people sympathise with the aims and work of the society. The RTVD finds the developments in the Netherlands in the field of euthanasia encouraging although in respect of conditions in Sweden there is still a long way to go.

As reported in Newsletter No 2, the Death With Dignity Bill of Jeremy Purvis, Liberal Democrat MSP, has been out for consultation by public bodies and committees through the summer. It is expected to be debated in the Scottish Parliament later this year.

The Department of Architecture & Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has an exhibition with the name SAFE: Design takes on Risk from October 16, 2005 to January 2, 2006.

SAFE presents about 300 objects and prototypes designed in order to protect the body and the mind from dangerous or stressful situations; prevent and respond to emergency; and provide a sense of comfort and safety. It will be the first design exhibition to take place at MoMA’s new building, accompani3d by a catalogue with several essays and plates illustrating the subject.

The Netherlands first officially reported case of a doctor complying with a request for assisted suicide from a patient with Alzheimer’s disease was lawful, a report has said.

The physician who applied terminal sedation (giving sleeping drugs and morphine in “normal” doses) to a terminally ill patient was acquitted by both the courts and the medical disciplinary tribunal; after that both the Prosecution Office and the Health Inspectorate went to appeal. He has now been again acquitted by the Court of Appeal. In its verdict the court explicitly stated that there had not been any proof of a causal connection between the medication and the death of the patient. Now the doctor awaits only the result of the appeal to the medical tribunal, due in December.

A decision in July this year in the case of Peter K. is seen as helpful. It strengthens a patient’s right to self-determination and clarifies important areas of conflict, for example by stating clearly that feeding by injection without the patient’s consent is illegal. “An end to artificial feeding should not have been refused. Living wills, even expressed only orally, are also binding on care authorities.”

Source: Newsletter RtD-Europe, September 2005.

On June 2nd the National Ethics Committee published a position paper offering a compromise in the present debate. They recommended that the legislature should provide that living wills be binding on doctors and medical staff.

ADMD plans to re-launch the public debate on end-of-life issues by holding a major press conference on 23 September, the occasion of the publication of a book by Catherine Leguay, an official of ADMD: “Respecting life, arranging death – in favour of a Vincent Humbert law”. The book will have a preface by Marie Humbert (and a commentary by Henri Cavaillet).

Judgement is still awaited in the Dordogne case, which has already led to the creation of two support associations – one for the nurse, the other for the doctor involved. The doctor tried to take all the responsibility since she prescribed the action concerned.

On 9 June the national consultative committee on ethics (CCNE) presented an opinion on “the refusal of treatment and the autonomy of the person”. The CCNE has formulated a number of recommendations seeking to reconcile new rights for patients with the duties of doctors. It insists on the absolute need “to respect individual liberty” and states “the refusal of treatment clearly expressed by a person over the age of majority who still has control of their faculties has to be respected, even if it leads to death”.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the French ADMD. Founded in April 1980 by Michel Landa, the ADMD held its first General Assembly on 2nd June that year.