The right-to-die debate has gone a step futher in Belgium. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson speaks to a mother who wants others to avoid her baby’s slow, painful death.
PUTTE, Belgium—In this small village amid an array of Flemish farms, they were an unusual but seemingly happy pair, two 43-year-olds who were identical, deaf twins. Townspeople recalled seeing Marc and Eddy Verbessem around town frequently, talking animatedly in sign language together, tooling around in a small blue car, and regularly buying two copies of a popular gossip magazine. No one expected them to decide to die on purpose.
To investigate attitudes towards physician-assisted death in minors among all physicians involved in the treatment of children dying in Flanders, Belgium over an 18-month period, and how these are related to actual medical end-of-life practices.
A majority of surveyed Flemish physicians appear to accept physician-assisted dying in children under certain circumstances and favour an amendment to the euthanasia law to include minors. The approach favoured is one of assessing decision-making capacity rather than setting arbitrary age limits. These stances, and their connection with actual end-of-life practices, may encourage policy-makers to develop guidelines for medical end-of-life practices in minors that address specific challenges arising in this patient group.