Bioethics News

A father who went to the High Court to try to stop a hospital turning off his seriously ill baby son’s life support machine has dropped his objections to the move. A host of paediatricians, nurses, and experts went into the witness box. Many of them urged a judge to decide that this profoundly disabled 13-month-old boy should be allowed to die. It was, they said, no longer in his best interests to keep him alive.

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Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of “slow euthanasia”, research suggests. A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time. Guidelines for care at the end of life emphasise that doctors should always act in a patient’s best interests and act within the law, which prohibits euthanasia or actively helping someone to die.

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They tackle questions of whether to begin or continue aggressive treatments or artificial life support, such as ventilators or feeding tubes. Only 25% of Americans have advance directives spelling out their values and choices for the day “when I’m not myself any more and never will be again,” Seery says.

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The recent ruling by the law lords in the case of Debbie Purdy has re-ignited the debate over assisted suicide. Polls suggest that while a majority of the public would support a change in the law to allow assisted dying, most doctors are against it. But there is evidence that some clinicians may already be using continuous deep sedation (CDS), as a form of “slow euthanasia”.

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It has long been the case that patients have a legal right to refuse treatment. But in recent years there has been controversy about the right of patients to be tube fed or hydrated right up until the point of death.

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A British couple who were both suffering from terminal cancer have died at a voluntary euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. Peter and Penelope Duff, from Bath, ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich last Friday.

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In all, 401 terminally ill Oregonians have died this way since 1997, when Oregon made it legal for a doctor to prescribe a lethal drug dose to a terminally ill patient who makes the request orally and in writing. Oregon is about to lose its exclusive status as the only state where such a prescription — known variously as doctor-assisted suicide or physician aid-in-dying — is legal. An almost identical law will take effect Thursday in Washington.

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When Washington state’s Death with Dignity law is enacted this week, experts say people who think they may want to take advantage of it should decide now who their health care provider will be. “You need to find out now if your doctor shares your values, because when you are terminally ill, when you’re close to your death, that’s not the time to find out,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a Denver-based organization that advocates physician-assisted death.

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A woman with multiple sclerosis has lost her Appeal Court case to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, 45, from Bradford, is considering going to a Swiss clinic to end her life, but fears her husband may be charged on his return to the UK. She wanted clarification of where her husband, Omar Puente would stand legally if he helped her in any way.

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Conflicting wishes and demands regarding end of life care are a common – but not often discussed – problem, with no clear solution. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by three doctors from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital illustrates the emotional dilemma.

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