Blog

Medecine and society

BY MICHEL DONGOIS MARCH 1st 2013 for L'ACTUALITÉ MÉDICALE

Approximately 6000 critically ill patients requested and obtained euthanasia in Belgium since 2002.

Dr Catherine Dopchie* recently spoke in Montreal about the decriminalisation of euthanasia in her country over the past ten years. She spoke about what she calls the "derivatives and misuses" of the law. L'actualité Médicale met with her. She gave her own personal point of view.

The criteria for the decriminalisation of euthanasia are clear (see frame) However, ...

Continue Reading → Belgium: 10 years of decriminalisation of euthanasia-a doctor testifies

Why Euthanasia STOP ?

The law decriminalising euthanasia in Belgium was passed in May 2002. This law created a framework allowing a patient to formulate a request for euthanasia and for a doctor to accede to it, under certain conditions, without committing a criminal offense.

Today, new legislative proposals aiming to broaden the field of law to minors, to those with dementia...are under discussion in the Belgian Parliament.

This fad is not shared by all Belgian citizens. Unfortunately, access to the traditional ...

Continue Reading → A Belgian website againt euthanasia run by professionals; finally!

Here is the heavy and sad Belgian reality for the ill and end-of-life people taken hostage by a heavily bureaucratic system. After 10 years of applying the law on euthanasia, confusion still reigns, the lack of information is blatant, the application of the law permitting for euthanasia is complicated and the boundaries are impossible to control as the article below clearly demonstrates.

We have to come to the conclusion that the experience of 10 years of euthanasia in Belgium shows that ...

Continue Reading → In Belgium: Between the request and the act of euthanasia: confusion reigns within the heavily bureaucratic system…

An absolute must-read:

A. et J.-F. Roseau are students in medicine and public-affairs (Paris VII-Diderot et Sciences Po Paris).

Euthanasie : l'acharnement législatif | Causeur

Comments:

How similar the debates are! The title says much on our incapacity as a society to really live together without discrimination towards the most vulnerable: i.e people in end-of-life, the sick, the elderly who are alone and neglected. In the medias we hear about the loss of autonomy of the sick or of people afflicted with ...

Continue Reading → Euthanasia: Aggressive legislation. From a solidary life to a solitary death.

For having allowed an emergency patient to sleep instead of doing a complete clinical evaluation, a nurse is stricken for six months.

July 15th 2008 was a very busy night for Chantal B.-Caron and her colleagues. Not long after midnight, a patient presented herself to the emergency room complaining of a headache. According to the judgement of l'Ordre des infirmiers et infirmières du Québec (OIIQ), the patient was «demanding and difficult».

Mrs Caron did not then perform a complete clinical evaluation which ...

Continue Reading → A nurse struck off for having allowed a patient to sleep