Let's have a big conversation in Ireland - open, honest and balanced By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, Director - EPC, International and HOPE IrelandBrendan O'Connor has thought about Bernadette Forde's death more deeply than most. (Ireland's Sunday Independent 3 May 2015), though his conclusions are still wrong. Continue reading

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick - Director of EPC - International and HOPE Ireland. Emer O'Kelly writes emotionally in the Irish Sunday Independent about Marie Fleming.Marie was my friend and colleague in Swansea University for several years. At times we 'colluded' - the Northern Irish Two against the world - in the nicest and fun way of course. Continue reading

Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE, is the director of EPC International and lives near Avignon France. Article first appeared on Alex Schadenberg's blog. France is in danger of buying a deadly illusion: that terminal sedation is neither assisted suicide nor euthanasia. In the Netherlands it can be both, and the numbers of people being terminally sedated there are growing at an alarming rate. From the minute the Assemblée Nationale should pass any such legislation, terminal sedation will become the lie to hide the practice of euthanasia throughout France too.On Tuesday March 17, 2015 the French parliament overwhelmingly voted to give people the right to demand terminal sedation - that is, for them to be made unconscious in their last hours and days. We have been warning about the steep rise in the use of terminal sedation in the Netherlands, as a form of 'back-door' euthanasia. Continue reading

Terry Pratchett, an author and a euthanasia promoter, died yesterday at the age of 66. By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick, the director of EPC International first published on Alex Schadenberg's blog.My first 'outing' on the assisted suicide/euthanasia debate was a student debate in Trinity College Dublin. I was very new to the subject and in truth, a very slick Phillip Nitschke wiped the floor with me. I swore it would never happen again, although something similar did, just once more, a couple of months later when the supposedly independent chair of a debate in London, Jon Snow, aggressively turned on those of us who were opposed to legalising any third party intervention in decision-making at the end of someone's life. I have learned a great deal since then, have a much deeper understanding of the catastrophic consequences of laws permitting assisted suicide and/or euthanasia. Continue reading

Assisted Suicide campaigners' deaths prove we do not need to change assisted suicide laws. By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick (OBE), Director of EPC - International. First published on Alex Schadenberg's Blog.We do not 'speak ill of the dead'. De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est, a mortuary aphorism that dates from at least the 4th century is, I suspect, rooted in a superstitious fear that the dead may come back to harm us if we say bad things about them; perhaps that we might ourselves be condemned to wander as 'lost souls' in revenge for badmouthing those who are gone. We may, at times, wish to honour the memory of someone we couldn't stand in life, or whose works and their consequences we hated; but if we are to avoid dishonesty, insincerity, we must have the courage to stand by what we said when they were alive. We can still be properly respectful in how we speak. Continue reading

By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition International.Spokesperson - Not Dead Yet UK Campaign. Originally published on Alex Schadenberg's blog.  (Link to a PDF of the article)Belgium's leading euthanasia practitioner recently conducted a 'study tour' of Auschwitz (reported in Der Spiegel Nov 21, 2014). His group of seventy included doctors, psychologists and nurses from Belgium, all in favour of euthanasia; with no-one to challenge their world-view that they are right in taking the lives of other human beings. One is a psychiatrist, deliberating a request for euthanasia by a man with bi-polar disorder who loses thousands gambling during his manic phases. That such a request can be considered at all shows just how far they have travelled already in Belgium under Wim Distelmans. Continue reading

Post originally appeared on Alex Schadenberg's blog: By Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition International.Spokesperson/Convener of the Not Dead Yet UK Campaign. Continue reading

by Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE, Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, International and leader of Not Dead Yet UK The idea of a 'rational' suicide is, to Philip Nitschke, mere 'commonsense'. It is a seductive idea - as so many of his pronouncements can be to an unreflective audience - it contains dangerous elisions that serve his purposes and try to bury serious, thoughtful objections. His recent comments follow Belgium's decision to euthanize one of its prisoners, a serial rapist/murderer.Counting suicide as a rational act is shallow and self-serving; if people buy the idea from him, then he stands to sell more of his death-kits, take the media limelight for those who kill themselves following his advice, sell more places at his death seminars and sell membership subscriptions to his organisation - make no mistake, Nitschke enjoys his notoriety built from the despair of others, but he makes money too, on their backs already strained to the point of terminal desolation. Continue reading