Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Swiss Court Ruling Allows Euthanasia For Mentally Ill

Colin Revell | 03.04.2007 16:11 | Health | Repression | Social Struggles | World

A RULING by Switzerland's highest court has opened up the possibility that people with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own lives.

Switzerland already allows doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients under certain circumstances. The Federal Tribunal's decision puts mental illnesses on the same level as physical ones.

The move has been labelled as "dangerous" as it could lead to a rapid rise in the number of people travelling to Switzerland for assisted suicide.

Read full story below....


Swiss Court Ruling Allows Euthanasia For Mentally Ill
By Christopher Claire

A RULING by Switzerland's highest court has opened up the possibility that people with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own lives.

Switzerland already allows doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients under certain circumstances. The Federal Tribunal's decision puts mental illnesses on the same level as physical ones.

The move has been labelled as "dangerous" as it could lead to a rapid rise in the number of people travelling to Switzerland for assisted suicide.

The latest figures show 54 Britons travelled to Zurich's Dignitas Clinic to end their lives in the past four years.

"It must be recognised that an incurable, permanent, serious mental disorder can cause similar suffering as a physical [disorder], making life appear unbearable to the patient in the long term," the ruling said.

"If the death wish is based on an autonomous decision which takes all circumstances into account, then a mentally ill person can be prescribed sodium-pentobarbital and thereby assisted in suicide," it added.

Various organisations exist in Switzerland to help people who want to commit suicide, and helping someone to die is not punishable under Swiss law as long as there is no "selfish motivation" for doing so.

In their ruling the judges made it clear certain conditions would have to be met before a mentally ill person's request for suicide assistance could be considered justified: "A distinction has to be made between a death wish which is an expression of a curable, psychiatric disorder and which requires treatment, and [a death wish] which is based on a person of sound judgment's own well-considered and permanent decision, which must be respected."

The case was brought by a 53-year-old man with serious bipolar affective disorder who asked the tribunal to allow him to acquire a lethal dose of pentobarbital without a doctor's prescription.

The tribunal ruled against his request, confirming the need for a thorough medical assessment of his condition.

Whether any Swiss physician would be prepared to prescribe a lethal dose of pentobarbital to a mentally ill person remains unclear. One internationally renowned expert on medical ethics said such a policy would be both difficult to enforce and dangerous to apply.

"Assisted suicide has always been linked to the challenge of allowing the terminally ill a choice in managing their inevitable death," said Dr Arthur Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "Linking the right to assistance in dying to the quality of someone's life or their suffering is an enormous and, in my view, very dangerous shift in legal and ethical thinking about assisted suicide."

Caplan said the policy could lead to a "very slippery slope", opening the door to anyone who claims to have unbearable psychological or emotional suffering to request help in dying: people with terrible burns, those who are severely disfigured, those who are emotionally bereft at the loss of a child or partner, and even those suffering from career failures.

"This is an incredibly controversial decision," he said. "Is the doctor's mission to eliminate difficult and horrendous human suffering by helping people to die?"

Elsbeth Chowdharay-Best, honorary secretary of Alert, an anti-euthanasia organisation set up to warn people of the dangers of any type of euthanasia legislation and pro-death initiatives, said: "I think this is a horrifying development. It takes one back to the Nazi era, when people with disabilities were considered disposable."

Switzerland is one of a number of countries in Europe that allow assistance to terminally ill people who wish to die.

The Netherlands legalised euthanasia in 2001 and Belgium did in 2002, while Britain and France allow terminally ill people to refuse treatment in favour of death.

Source: The Scotsman
 http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=183882007


****This is very SHOCKING and TERRYFYING !!!

Please share with others.....

Story source from Disabled People's International (DPI) website:-
 http://v1.dpi.org/lang-en/resources/details?page=863

Colin Revell

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. Please expand. — freedom of choice
  2. Please expand.. — sb
  3. No laws to free the mad — Myriam Aikidoh

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech