Human medical experiments

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Body Sphere

Amanda Smith

In 1891, Swedish physician Carl Janson was investigating black smallpox pus. “Calves were only obtainable at considerable cost”, he noted. So instead he experimented on 14 children from an orphanage.

Vulnerable people continued to be used as medical guinea pigs into the 20th century.

Most sinister was the Nazi program, including the little-known story of 5 Australian POWs in Crete who were subject to experimentation without their consent.

The methods of Third Reich doctors were inhumane, so is it ethical to use data from Nazi medical experiments?  . . . [Full text]

 

MPs launch new Conscience Objection Bill

 Ekklesia

March 2nd 2016 marked 100 years since the first inclusive right of conscientious objection became law in the United Kingdom.

To commemorate the centenary, the NGO Conscience: Taxes for Peace not War, hosted a discussion evening featuring MPs from three different parties and Sir Richard Jolly, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary General.

It also served as the launch of the ‘Taxes for Peace Bill’ legislation which would bring conscientious objection into the 21st century by allowing people who object to funding war to re-direct the military portion of their taxes to non-violent methods of sustaining our national security. . . [Full text]

 

Belgian lawmakers to vote on world’s first death on demand law which would mean no doctor could stop a patient who wants to die

 Law is said to have high chance of getting support from parliamentarians

The Daily Mail

Steve Doughty

The world’s first ‘death on demand’ law is set to go before legislators in Belgium who have already ushered through an ultra-liberal euthanasia regime.

The new rules would mean no doctor would be allowed to block the wishes of a patient who asked to die.

The law – put forward by the country’s opposition socialist party – is thought to have a high chance of commanding support from a majority of parliamentarians.

They come at a time when numbers dying each year under the euthanasia laws have doubled in five years to reach more than 2,000. . . [Full text]

 

The Health Care Professional as Person: The Place of Conscience

Canadian Catholic Bioethics Centre

Bioethics Matters

Bridget Campion*

Recently I was asked to present “the Catholic position” on physician-assisted death as part of a panel discussion held at a downtown Toronto hospital. The purpose of the event was not to debate the issue but to educate participants about various points of view. I ran into some difficulty when I was discussing the Catholic Church’s interest in protecting the consciences of health care staff. One panelist immediately redirected our attention to the needs of the patient seeking physician-assisted death and the conversation left the health care professionals behind. In this short article, I would like to bring the focus back to the doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, therapists, in short, to the health care staff involved in patient care and who may have objections to performing or assisting in physician-assisted death.. . .  Full Text

More bracket creep in Belgian euthanasia

BioEdge

Michael Cook

Three bills which could significantly expand the scope of euthanasia in Belgium have been proposed by Laurette Onkelinx, the leader of the Belgian Socialists and a former Deputy Prime Minister.

The first (PDF) would remove a five-year sunset clause for advance declaration of a patient’s willingness to accept euthanasia. This would mean that a document written 20 or 30 years before would be valid, no matter what a patient might have thought in recent times.

The second (PDF) would force doctors to give a rapid turn-around to requests for euthanasia. They would have to answer within seven days. If they refused, they would have to transfer the patient’s file to a doctor who would be willing to give a lethal injection. This threatens to remove physicians’ right to conscientious objection to euthanasia. It would also force doctors to treat a request as a matter of urgency, even though it might have come during a psychological crisis which would soon pass.

The third (PDF) would remove the right of institutions like hospitals or nursing homes to refuse to allow euthanasia on their premises. Ms Onkelinx insists that institutions have no right to conscientious objection; only doctors do. Her bill affirms a doctor’s right to follow his conscientious belief in the practice of euthanasia. In an explanatory memorandum, she invokes the principle that “a doctor can be neither forced to nor prevented from practicing euthanasia in legal conditions, wherever he might be.”

Although the proposals are radical, they have hardly been reported, even in the Belgian media.

 

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