Results: Laws on assisted dying in The Netherlands and Belgium are restricted to doctors. In principle, assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) is not illegal in either Germany or Switzerland, but a doctor’s participation in Germany would violate the code of professional medical conduct and might contravene of a doctor’s legal duty to save life. The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill proposed in the UK in 2005 focused on doctors, whereas the Proposal on Assisted Dying of the Norwegian Penal Code Commission minority in 2002 did not. Conclusion: A society moving towards an open approach to assisted dying should carefully identify tasks to assign exclusively to medical doctors, and distinguish those possibly better performed by other professions.
About 40% of German doctors could imagine themselves helping terminally ill patients to commit suicide such as by providing drugs, a survey has shown. The representative survey, published in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel (24 Nov, p 164; www.spiegel.de/politik/debatte/0,1518,592070,00.html), said that 3.3% of the responding doctors had already helped patients with suicide. The German Medical Association has questioned the validity of the results and, after a meeting with Protestant and Catholic churches, has confirmed its opposition to any participation of doctors in suicide.
John Coggon The German National Ethics Council has recently published its Opinion on Self- Determination and Care at the End of Life. 1 The Opinion raises and attempts to resolve issues that are troubling many people in many jurisdictions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the well-rehearsed range of views on euthanasia, assisted-suicide, suicide, and care for the dying, the Council’s Opinion is neither extreme in its suppositions nor in its proposals. This may not satisfy campaigners and commentators who sit on the polar edges of the debate, but it represents a predictable compromise, and will satisfy medical practitioners and those who are increasingly concerned with the inadequacy of palliative care for the elderly, the dying, and the chronically sick.
The National Ethics Council has intensively discussed the issues involved in dealing responsibly with dying. It has perused a large volume of material, obtained expert opinions, consulted with doctors and other medical specialists, and held meetings in Augsburg and Münster at which it exposed itself to public debate. The outcome is enshrined in the Opinion now presented. Self-determination and care at the end of life continues the examination of the themes addressed in the Opinion The advance directive published in June 2005. The present analysis, in conjunction with the clarification of terminology here proposed, may facilitate interpretation of the recommendations set out in that Opinion.
A court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that helping someone to commit suicide for financial gain should no longer be legal. It decided this month that Dr Roger Kusch, senator for justice in Hamburg from 2001 to 2006, should no longer be allowed to continue his practice of helping people to kill themselves for a fee. In 2007 Dr Kusch, a former member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, had founded "Dr Roger Kusch Sterbehilfe," a registered society promoting the right to die (www.kuschsterbehilfe.de ). So far, Dr Kusch has helped three elderly women and two men, none of whom were terminally ill, to end their lives. They each paid a fee of {euro}6500 (£5820; $8300) to Dr Kusch and also {euro}1500 to a psychiatrist, who determined they had the mental capacity to make decisions.
An out-of-hours doctor who killed a 70-year-old man by injecting him with an overdose of a painkiller could repeat the error, a panel has warned. Nigerian-born Dr Daniel Ubani, 67, injected David Gray, of Manea, Cambridgeshire, with 10 times the recommended dosage of a painkiller. A General Medical Council (GMC) panel is holding a hearing into the case. The panel said Dr Ubani's actions had "brought the profession into disrepute" and questioned his clinical competence.