Daniel Gall, a French actor, was skeptical when his sister and her husband told him two years ago that they wanted to commit suicide. Genevieve Gall-Peninou was 81 and said she could no longer bear the Alzheimer’s Disease she had suffered for several years. Yves Peninou, 86, didn’t want to live without her. (Wall Street Journal)

The BBC has been accused of promoting euthanasia by a cross-party group of MPs who called on ministers to threaten to cut off the supply of public money to the broadcaster. (Telegraph)

Kay, an 89-year-old resident of a North Vancouver nursing home, had travelled with family to Zurich, Switzerland, to a clinic called Dignitas. The mother of seven children was in a wheelchair, suffering from a terminal condition called spinal tenosis, which meant her body, as she said, was “totally collapsing.” (Vancouver Sun)

THE Catholic Church last night vowed to challenge in court any move to legalise assisted suicide, after veteran MSP Margo MacDonald launched her right-to-die bill. The Church has questioned the legality of the proposed law that could introduce suicide clinics to Scotland and see those as young as 16 given the right to decide to have their lives ended. (Scotsman)

Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy (Volume 13, Number 1, February 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Molecular Medicine and Concepts of Disease: The Ethical Value of a Conceptual Analysis of Emerging Biomedical Technologies” by Marianne Boenink, 11-23.
• “Rational Suicide: Philosophical Perspectives on Schizophrenia” by Jeanette Hewitt, 25-31.
• “‘It’s Intense, You Know.’ Nurses’ Experience in Caring for Patients Requesting Euthanasia,” by Yvonne Denier, Bernadette Dierckx De Casterlé, Nele De Bal, and Chris Gastmans; 41-48.
• “How to Reveal Disguised Paternalism” by Niels Lynoe, Niklas Juth, and Gert Helgesson; 59-65.
• “Problems Faced with Legislating for IVF Technology in a Roman Catholic Century” by Pierre Mallia, 77-87.

Bioethics (Volume 24, Issue 2, February 2010) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Are Recent Defences of the Brain Death Concept Adequate?” by Ari Joffe, 47-53.
• “Ethical Debate Over Organ Donation in the Context of Brain Death” by Mary Jiang Bresnahan and Kevin Mahler, 54-60.
• “Could a Zygote by a Human Being?” by John Burgess, 61-70.
• “Human Reproductive Cloning: A Conflict of Liberties” by Joyce C. Havstad, 71-77.
• “Living to the Bitter End? A Personalist Approach to Euthanasia in Persons with Severe Dementia” by Chris Gasmans and Jan De Lepeleire, 78-86.
• “Patient Autonomy, Assessment of Competence and Surrogate Decision-Making: A Call for Reasonableness in Deciding for Others” by KRISTINE BÆRØE, 87-95.

Recent proposals to restrict or even ban the practice of euthanasia have emerged in Switzerland, where doctors have been permitted to offer the option not only to Swiss residents but also foreigners. (RT Top Stories)

n insurance it’s called a “moral hazard”. A moral hazard is the result of maximizing behavior. A person weighs the costs and benefits of an action and when benefits exceed costs, he takes the action. For example, if an accident costs the person $1000, but pays $2000, the person not only has no incentive to avoid the accident but may have an incentive to seek it out.

What has this got to do with assisted suicide? There could be “millions” in estate tax reasons why they relate. Estate taxes have long been referred to as the “death tax”, but 2010 may shine a whole new meaning on that term. Presently the estate tax is 45%. The estate tax will drop to 0% for just one year, 2010, and then return to the pre-Bush administration rate of 55% in 2011. (Oregon Business News)

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Montana, and doctors who help terminally ill patients die are shielded from prosecution, the state Supreme Court ruled.

Montana is the third state, after Oregon and Washington, to allow physicians to help such patients end their lives, and yesterday’s decision is the first from a U.S. state high court to protect the choice, said Steve Hopcraft, a spokesman for Compassion and Choices, a group that advocates the practice. (BusinessWeek)

The government announced it will host travelling consultations on the thorny question of assisted suicide.

It will first consult about 20 experts on the subject, and prepare a discussion paper that will help guide the discussions. (The Canadian Press)

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (Volume 6, Issue 4, December 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “The Ethical Basis for Sustainable Human Security: A Place for Anthropocentrism?” by Alexander K. Lautensach, 437-455.
• “Neonatal Euthanasia- Why Require Parental Consent?” by Jacob M. Appel, 477-482.
• “Pastoral Power and the Confessing Subject in Patient-Centered Communication” by Christopher Mayes, 483-493.
• “The ‘Obligation’ to Screen and Its Effect on Autonomy” by Yvonne Lau and Chrystal Jaye, 495-505.

On April 29-30, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, MO will be hosting a symposium on Pediatric Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine.  A full afternoon session will be dedicated to presentations and discussions revolving around the Ethical Issues related to developing infrastructure for a pediatric personalized medicine program.  Topics include Ethical and Legal Barriers to Pediatric Bio-banking Initiatives, Critical Issues of Consent, Assent, and Distributive Justice in Pediatrics, Ethical Implications of Pediatric Genomics from a Regulatory Perspective, Pediatric Implications for Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomics, and Challenges Facing Implementation of Personalized Medicine from a Japanese perspective.  Speakers include Skip Nelson, John Lantos, and Kyle Brothers.  For more information, please contact Mrs. Melonie Clifton at 816-234-3059 or mclifton@cmh.edu.

More than 1,000 people have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives. But what is it really like inside the world’s first assisted suicide centre? (The Guardian)

Parliament will soon vote on a private member’s bill to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, subject to safeguards. And the Quebec College of Physicians has just endorsed euthanasia in some circumstances and is calling for Criminal Code amendments to protect doctors who hasten the death of suffering patients when those patients face “imminent and inevitable death.” (The Globe and Mail)

The international assisted-suicide movement has many faces. America’s “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, probably comes most readily to mind. The activist groups, Compassion & Choices and Final Exit Network, are also well known. Then there is Australia’s “Dr. Death,” Philip Nitschke, who travels the world teaching people how to commit suicide with helium or animal-euthanasia drugs obtained from Mexico. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Switzerland is looking to change the law on assisted suicide to make sure it is only used as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit so-called “death tourism,” the government said on Wednesday. (ABC News)

Around a third of doctors say they have given drugs to terminally ill patients or withdrawn treatment, knowing or intending that it would shorten their life, research reveals. (The Guardian)

A German doctor has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of 13 cancer patients who died from suspected overdoses of pain-killing drugs. (BBC )

A majority of Quebec’s medical specialists are in favour of legalizing euthanasia and believe the public also supports the idea, according to an Ipsos Descarie poll released Tuesday.

Of 2,025 medical specialists who answered a poll on the subject, 75 per cent said they were “certainly” or “probably” in favour of legalizing euthanasia, as long as the practice were strictly regulated. (CBC News)

Two southwestern Connecticut doctors said Wednesday that they are suing the state to allow them to provide “aid in dying” for mentally competent, terminally ill patients. (Connecticut Post)

The legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada could reduce the level of care available to those with terminal illnesses, two Ottawa doctors warn. (CBC News)