Assisted suicide organisation opens branch in Germany
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《英国医生杂志》
The decision by Dignitas, the Swiss assisted suicide organisation, to open their first office abroad in Hanover, Lower Saxony, in September this year has provoked fierce controversy in Germany. The branch will provide information and advice to people wanting to commit suicide but will not actually provide any drugs for the purpose, unlike the organisation抯 head office in Switzerland.
Dignitas was launched in 1998 by former journalist and lawyer Ludwig Minelli, aged 73, and is based in Zurich. It claims to have helped more than 450 terminally ill people to commit suicide, most of them travelling from Germany and other countries to Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal. Active euthanasia is explicitly banned in Germany, but the law on assisted suicide is less clear.
In an interview in the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung on 22 October, Mr Minelli said that patients and relatives seeking help are first seen by a medical doctor and then examined as to whether they are of sound mind and able to take a lethal drug. Clients always have the right to opt out and leave at any time, but if they wish to go ahead they are given the barbiturate sodium pentobarbital and an anti-emetic, which they take at a flat in Zurich, where they die. The organisation charges about �1100 (?50; $1300) plus extras for a suicide. Even with the new branch in Germany, people will have to travel to Switzerland to receive help with their suicide.
The justice minister of Lower Saxony, Elisabeth Heister-Neumann, is threatening legal action to ban Dignitas from Germany. She said that she would look into the possibility of creating a new nationwide law that would make professional help with suicide a criminal offence, especially if it is offered commercially.
Ulla Schmidt, federal health minister, has announced that the government condemns any form of active euthanasia and is planning to spend �250m on establishing a network of palliative care wards and hospices. This announcement was welcomed by the German Hospice Movement.
Public and political reactions to the opening of a German branch of Dignitas has not been uniformly hostile, however. The German Society for Dying with Dignity, which has 35 000 members, welcomed Dignitas?decision to open a branch. Two opinion polls also showed that about a third of the German population was in favour of active euthanasia and assisted suicide in the case of terminal illness. An even greater proportion, more than half, wanted to see an improvement in palliative care and a strengthening of the hospice movement.
Also, not all of Ms Heister-Neumann抯 colleagues in the other German states see the need for a new law against any form of euthanasia. Currently, active euthanasia is treated as a criminal offence, but there is no explicit law about passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Germany抯 doctors are uniformly opposed to the move by Dignitas, however. J鰎g-Dietrich Hoppe, president of the German medical association, explicitly condemned Dignitas?activities. He said that assisted suicide was killing on demand and that this is forbidden in Germany. "The patient has a right to a dignified death, but does not have the right to be killed," Dr Hoppe said in a press release. "We therefore categorically reject assisted suicide."(Heidelberg Annette Tuffs)
Dignitas was launched in 1998 by former journalist and lawyer Ludwig Minelli, aged 73, and is based in Zurich. It claims to have helped more than 450 terminally ill people to commit suicide, most of them travelling from Germany and other countries to Switzerland where assisted suicide is legal. Active euthanasia is explicitly banned in Germany, but the law on assisted suicide is less clear.
In an interview in the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung on 22 October, Mr Minelli said that patients and relatives seeking help are first seen by a medical doctor and then examined as to whether they are of sound mind and able to take a lethal drug. Clients always have the right to opt out and leave at any time, but if they wish to go ahead they are given the barbiturate sodium pentobarbital and an anti-emetic, which they take at a flat in Zurich, where they die. The organisation charges about �1100 (?50; $1300) plus extras for a suicide. Even with the new branch in Germany, people will have to travel to Switzerland to receive help with their suicide.
The justice minister of Lower Saxony, Elisabeth Heister-Neumann, is threatening legal action to ban Dignitas from Germany. She said that she would look into the possibility of creating a new nationwide law that would make professional help with suicide a criminal offence, especially if it is offered commercially.
Ulla Schmidt, federal health minister, has announced that the government condemns any form of active euthanasia and is planning to spend �250m on establishing a network of palliative care wards and hospices. This announcement was welcomed by the German Hospice Movement.
Public and political reactions to the opening of a German branch of Dignitas has not been uniformly hostile, however. The German Society for Dying with Dignity, which has 35 000 members, welcomed Dignitas?decision to open a branch. Two opinion polls also showed that about a third of the German population was in favour of active euthanasia and assisted suicide in the case of terminal illness. An even greater proportion, more than half, wanted to see an improvement in palliative care and a strengthening of the hospice movement.
Also, not all of Ms Heister-Neumann抯 colleagues in the other German states see the need for a new law against any form of euthanasia. Currently, active euthanasia is treated as a criminal offence, but there is no explicit law about passive euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Germany抯 doctors are uniformly opposed to the move by Dignitas, however. J鰎g-Dietrich Hoppe, president of the German medical association, explicitly condemned Dignitas?activities. He said that assisted suicide was killing on demand and that this is forbidden in Germany. "The patient has a right to a dignified death, but does not have the right to be killed," Dr Hoppe said in a press release. "We therefore categorically reject assisted suicide."(Heidelberg Annette Tuffs)