http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3120835/Belgian-GPs-killing-patients-not-asked-die-Report-says-thousands-killed-despite-not-asking-doctor.html Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent for the Daily Mail
Thousands
of elderly people have been killed by their own GPs without ever asking
to die under Belgium’s euthanasia laws, an academic report said
yesterday.
It said that around one in every 60 deaths of a patient under GP care involves someone who has not requested euthanasia.
Half
of the patients killed without giving their consent were over the age
of 80, the study found, and two thirds of them were in hospital and were
not suffering from a terminal disease such as cancer.
In
about four out of five of the cases, the death was not discussed with
patients subjected to ‘involuntary euthanasia’ because they were either
in a coma, they were diagnosed with dementia, or because doctors decided
it would not be in their best interests to discuss the matter with
them.
Very
often doctors would not inform the families of plans to lethally inject
a relation because they considered it a medical decision to be made by
themselves alone, the report published by the Journal of Medical Ethics
said.
The
report raised new questions over Belgium’s increasingly controversial
13-year-old euthanasia law, which has won wide acceptance from the
medical establishment, and which now allows even children to be killed
by doctors.
Report
author Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor of Hull University said: ‘The
decision as to which life is no longer worth living is not in the hands
of the patient but in the hands of the doctor.’
‘It
should also be noted that deliberately ending the lives of patients
without their request is taking place in Belgium more than in all other
countries that document such practices, including the Netherlands.
‘It
is worrying that some physicians take upon themselves the
responsibility to deliberately shorten patients’ lives without a clear
indication from the patients that this is what they would want.
The
Israeli-born politics and philosophy professor added: ‘The Belgian
population should be aware of the present situation and know that if
their lives may come to the point where physicians think they are not
worth living, in the absence of specific living wills advising
physicians what to do then, they might be put to death.’
Belgium’s
Euthanasia Act restricts the practice of mercy killing to adults and
‘emancipated children’ who are suffering unbearably and who are able to
consent. It remains officially illegal for doctors to kill patients who
have not given their consent to death.
The
study found, however, that many GPs are killing their patients without
consent and that lack of consent may be more common than
officially-approved deaths.
‘Given
that ending patients’ lives without request is more common than
euthanasia, it is suggested to urge the Belgian medical profession to
put this issue high on its agenda,’ Professor Cohen-Almagor said.
The
study was published after Rob Marris, Labour MP for Wolverhampton South
West, announced that in September he will introduce a Private Member’s
Bill into the House of Commons to legalise assisted suicide.
There
have been a series of attempts in the courts and in Parliament to
overthrow the assisted suicide laws which in Britain mean anyone who
helps someone else to die faces a maximum 14 years in jail.
Former
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, now a Labour MP, brought
in prosecutions rules which mean no-one is likely to be charged with
assisting a suicide unless they acted out of greed or malice, and Tony
Blair’s former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer introduced an assisted
suicide bill into the Lords. This would have allowed two doctors to kill
a terminally ill patient who asked to die.
Supreme
Court judges have held back from legalising assisted suicide but their
rulings have piled pressure on Parliament to consider a new law.
Opponents
of assisted suicide said that the Belgian use of euthanasia showed that
an assisted suicide law would be a slippery slope towards medical
killing.
Lord
Carlile of Berriew, the Liberal Democrat peer who sat on the
parliamentary committee that advised against the legalisation of
euthanasia in the UK a decade ago, said: ‘I am horrified by it.
‘What
it demonstrates, if the facts underlying it are correct, is that in
Belgium, and elsewhere, so-called euthanasia is being carried out
without controls and it underlines why I am opposed to the Bill which
Rob Marris is going to put to the House of Commons,’ he said.
‘The safeguards which are being provided under his Bill are completely inadequate.’ Fiona
Bruce, Tory MP for Congleton and the chairman of the Parliamentary
Pro-Life Group, said: ‘The situation in Belgium is a stark warning that
in this country we should not go down the road of legalising assisted
suicide. . . .