Sinuciderea asistata. Eutanasia umana Options

[Diana.]

Assisted suicide TV programme reopens debate
2009 October 5
Terminally ill choosing assisted suicide should be allowed to do so without travelling abroad, advocates urge

Proponents of assisted suicide are calling for the elimination of laws preventing the terminally ill from receiving assistance to end their lives after TV footage documenting the final moments of a 53-year-old man.

TV2 on Sunday broadcast the story of Kaj Guldbech, who had been suffering from incurable pancreatic cancer before he ended his life at a Swiss suicide clinic earlier this month.

He chose to have the procedure carried out in Switzerland because it is legal there. He had made repeated calls during the final months of his life to be allowed help to commit suicide, most recently three weeks ago, also on TV2.

Pointing to the debilitating nature of the condition he had been suffering from since 2000, Guldbech compared assisted suicide laws with animal welfare laws.

‘If I treated my animals like we treat humans and just let them suffer, I’d be found guilty of animal abuse and neglect and wouldn’t able to own animals anymore.’

During the broadcast, footage of Guldbech travelling to Switzerland was shown, as were consultations with a doctor to ensure that it was his wish to take his own life.

Guldbech was shown being given a sedative by personnel at the Dignitas clinic. He then asked for the first dose of medication that was to end his life.

In the final scene before the cameras were switched off, Guldbech was shown saying a tearful farewell and asking for the second and final dose of medication.

Guldbech’s death was not shown, and the next scene in the broadcast was of his casket being carried out of the clinic.

Accompanying Guldbech on the trip was Flemming Scholaart, the president of EVD, an association promoting the rights of the terminally ill. EVD dropped its support for assisted suicide two years ago due to massive political resistance.

Scholaart, said however, that Guldbech’s story, and the fact that it cost him a reported 80,000 kroner to have it carried out, showed ‘how grotesquely things have developed’.

But the cost of travelling to a clinic in another country was only one argument in favour of allowing assisted suicide. Allowing people to end their lives in familiar surroundings, he said, was more important.

Euthanasia is punishable as manslaughter in Denmark, but certain measures are allowed, such as refusing to accept treatment, stopping treatment of the terminally ill or prescribing pain killers that accelerate the process of death for the terminally ill.

The Health Ministry and a majority in parliament ground their resistance to assisted suicide on Ethical Council guidelines warning that permitting the procedure would turn it into a routine, rather than a last ditch procedure.

The Ethical Council adds that current legislation is sufficient to ensure that adequate care is provided for the dying and those suffering from chronic pain.