Category: Procedures & Services

Dutch euthanasia regulator quits over dementia killings

Catholic Herald

Simon Caldwell

The number of dementia patients killed by euthanasia has risen fourfold over the past five years

A Dutch euthanasia regulator has quit her post in protest at the killings of patients suffering from dementia.

Berna van Baarsen, a medical ethicist, said she could not support “a major shift” in the interpretation of her country’s euthanasia law to endorse lethal injections for increasing numbers of dementia patients.

She has now resigned from one of Holland’s five regional assessment committees set up to oversee the provision of euthanasia. . . [Full Text]

BC recorded 188 medically assisted deaths; 77 on Vancouver Island

Vancouver Sun

Amy Smart, Victoria Times-Colonist

Seventy-seven people on Vancouver Island died with medical assistance in 2016, more than any other region in B.C. — and most other provinces.

Some speculate the high number might be the result of demographics and a long history of advocacy for the right to assisted death.

For each assisted death performed, between five and 10 patients are deemed ineligible, Island Health said.

A Times Colonist survey of provincial coroners, health ministries and health authories found that British Columbia ranked among the highest of medical assistance in dying, with 188 assisted deaths recorded. That was one more than Ontario, where the chief coroner recorded 187 deaths. . . [Full Text]

Palliative care nurses quit ‘houses of euthanasia’

Catholic Herald

Simon Caldwell

Belgian nurses and social workers who specialise in treating dying patients are quitting their jobs because palliative care units are being turned into “houses of euthanasia”, a senior doctor has alleged.

Increasing numbers of hospital staff employed in the palliative care sector are abandoning their posts because they did not wish to be reduced to preparing “patients and their families for lethal injections”, according to Professor Benoit Beuselinck, a consultant oncologist of the Catholic University Hospitals of Leuven.

He said that after more than 15 years of legal euthanasia in Belgium “palliative care units are … at risk of becoming ‘houses of euthanasia’, which is the opposite of what they were meant to be”. . . [Full Text]

Complaint filed with federal agency by Rockford nurse over abortion mandates

rrstar.com

Georgett Braun

ROCKFORD.  A local woman has filed a complaint with a federal agency alleging that she was forced from her job in 2015 at the Winnebago County Health Department because of abortion mandates.

The complaint was filed Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by attorneys representing Sandra Rojas.

The complaint alleges that Rojas, a pediatric nurse who worked 18 years at the Health Department, objected to a requirement that nurses be trained to make referrals to abortion providers and to help women obtain abortion drugs. . . . [Full Text]

British conscience protection bill: second reading set for 26 January, 2018

The Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL] 2017-19, introduced by Baroness Nuala O’Loan, will be debated during second reading in the British House of Lords on 26 January, 2018.  The proposal is a procedure-specific bill limited to activities associated with abortion, artificial reproduction and withdrawing life sustaining treatment.