Dutch News is reporting that the media hype over the idea of euthanasia for a 'completed life' that has been going on for more than a year, now has a legislative backer in D66 Mp, Pia Dijkstra. This idea was the subject of a government inquiry that followed years of lobbying by the NVVE - the Dutch euthanasia lobby - going back to 2010 and even earlier.A 'completed life' euthanasia is essentially where an elderly person (over 70 or 75 years of age) who has no definable terminal illness but, perhaps, the accumulation of the 'niggles' of aging, can ask to be made dead. The inquiry recommended that the government not proceed with the idea - but that has not stopped agitation. Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers told the Dutch Parliament in October that she was making plans to legalise 'assisted suicide for elderly people who were 'suffering from life' (gotta love the euphemisms!). No such plans have yet emerged. Continue reading

Today (24th November 2016) the Australian Medical Association released its new policy on euthanasia and assisted suicide. The policy review is a five-yearly process that involved significant consultation and surveying of members ahead of the development of the final document released today.The two page document changes the focus somewhat by opening with various affirmations about the AMA's commitment to making quality end-of-life care available to all Australians: Continue reading

As we have noted before, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation teamed up with Andrew Denton to push the case for euthanasia in the two debates held recently in South Australia. Early on in the first debate, I found myself in a discussion on live radio with one of the leaders in the Nurses Federation. At the time, Denton had been pushing the untruth that euthanasia was not killing. I saw it as my principle role to make sure that people understood what rubbish this indeed was. So, I wondered to the radio announcer whether or not the nurses would support euthanasia as they obviously were if, in fact, it was they that had to do the killing? The nurses boss brushed aside the question without really answering.It was only a few short weeks later when the second bill was introduced that we noted with horror that nurses were indeed able, under this new regimen, to kill their patients if authorised by a doctor. Continue reading