Category: News

Lords back assisted dying providing judge gives final ruling

The Independent

Lewis Smith

Judges could routinely be given the power of life or death over patients who are determined to die to end their suffering.

Proposals to use judges as the final arbiters of who can be helped to die go some way to satisfying opponents to Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill. Lord Pannick QC proposed judicial oversight in amendments to the Bill which went before the House of Lords yesterday. The Lords, in the first Parliamentary vote on the Bill, gave it their approval.

Baroness Butler-Sloss, former head of the High Court Family Division, was among critics of the Bill who said giving judges a crucial role in assisted dying cases could provide the safeguards needed. [Full text]

When is a problem not a problem?

Refusing to dispense drugs to kill patients with psychiatric illness

Levenseinde Kliniek complains about uncooperative Dutch pharmacists

Sean Murphy*

When is a problem not a problem?In April, 2014, a complaint was made in the Netherlands that some Dutch pharmacists were refusing to provide euthanasia drugs.  The complaint led members of the Dutch Parliament from the green party, GroenLinks, to ask for a debate with health minister, and members of other Dutch political parties let it be known that they were also concerned.

 According to the news reports, over half the physicians at “the independent euthanasia clinic” had been refused lethal drugs, and 23 percent of 53 pharmacists surveyed reported that they sometimes refused to fill euthanasia prescriptions.  It was argued that pharmacists should not be able to refuse drugs needed to kill patients if two physicians had approved the euthanasia request.  However, while the law in the Netherlands permits physicians to provide euthanasia, it does not mention pharmacists. [Full Text]

Doctors refusing to prescribe statins

Two in three family GPs refuse to follow NHS advice to give statins to 40 per cent of adults, survey finds

The Telegraph

Laura Donnelly, and Edward Malnick

Two thirds of GPs are refusing to comply with controversial NHS advice to prescribe statins to millions more adults, polling has found.

Family doctors said guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), advising 40 per cent of adults to take the pills, were “simplistic”. They insisted they would not allow the “mass medicalisation” of the public.

The guidelines, published in July, say drugs to protect against strokes and heart attacks should be offered to anyone with a one in 10 chance of developing heart disease within a decade.

It means 17.5 million adults, including most men aged over 60 and women over 65, are now eligible for the drugs, which cost less than 10p a day.

A number of cardiologists have defended the guidance, which Nice says could cut 50,000 deaths a year from strokes and heart attacks.

But the advice has divided experts, with prominent doctors accusing Nice’s experts of being too close to the pharmaceutical industry. [Full Text]

Justin Trudeau and the Doctrine of Double Truth


Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought and Kennedy Smith Chair of Catholic Studies, McGill University.

Canadian prof: Justin Trudeau’s ‘doctrine of double truth’ leads to suppression of freedom

LifeSite News

Thaddeus Balinski

A McGill University professor said that Justin Trudeau’s pronouncements supporting abortion while at the same time describing himself as “very religious, very Catholic,” are an example of a “doctrine of double truth” that leads to suppression of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.

Justin Trudeau’s views indicate “something can be fundamentally wrong according to sound religion, but fundamentally right according to sound politics,” said Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought and Kennedy Smith Chair of Catholic Studies, in a lecture delivered on October 29 as part of the CREOR Lecture Series on Religion, Secularity, Toleration at McGill’s Birks Heritage Chapel. [Full Text]

British Pregnancy Advisory Service head says abortion is just birth control

Sean Murphy*

In a column published in The Independent, Ann Furedi, CEO of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, argues that the existing English abortion law should be scrapped because abortion is simply another form of birth control.

Today, abortion is understood to be a fact of life. We expect to plan our families using the contraception that is freely available cost-free on the NHS. But we know that contraception is not infallible, and nor are we. We draw comfort from knowing that abortion is available as a back up to our chosen method of birth control. The existing laws are not fit for purpose – and the way abortion is provided today begs a simple question: why have a law at all?

This is consistent with earlier statements she has made.  In 2010 she told New Zealanders that abortion is required as a part of family planning programmes because contraception is not always effective. She noted that abortion rates do not drop when more effective means of contraception are available because women are no longer willing to tolerate the consequences of contraceptive failure.[TVNZ]

Furedi’s comments indicate that pressure to provide abortion is likely to increase even where contraception is readily available, thus increasing potential for conflicts of conscience among health care workers who do not wish to be involved with the procedure.  They also demonstrate a categorical refusal to acknowledge a critical factual distinction: that preventing the conception of an infant by contraception is not the same as killing an infant by abortion.  This distinction central to the reasoning of health care workers and others who refuse to participate in abortion, though they may have no objection to contraception.