[Dion]

Whereas the law sees assisted suicide and euthanasia as an exception, public opinion is shifting toward considering them rights, with corresponding duties on doctors to act.

Because each case is unique, five regional review committees were installed to assess every case and to decide whether it complied with the law. For five years after the law became effective, such physician-induced deaths remained level — and even fell in some years. In 2007, I wrote that “there doesn’t need to be a slippery slope when it comes to euthanasia. A good euthanasia law, in combination with the euthanasia review procedure, provides the warrants for a stable and relatively low number of euthanasia.”

Most of my colleagues drew the same conclusion.

But we were wrong — terribly wrong, in fact. In hindsight, the stabilization in the numbers was just a temporary pause. Beginning in 2008, the numbers of these deaths show an increase of 15 per cent annually, year after year. The annual report of the committees for 2012 recorded 4,188 cases (compared with 1,882 in 2002). Last year saw a continuation of this trend, and I expect the 6,000 line to be crossed this year or the next. Euthanasia is on the way to becoming a default mode of dying for cancer patients.

Other developments include a shift in the type of patients who receive these treatments. Whereas in the first years after 2002, hardly any patients with psychiatric illnesses or dementia appear in reports, these numbers are now sharply on the rise. Cases have been reported in which a large part of the suffering of those given euthanasia or assisted suicide consisted of being aged, lonely or bereaved. Some of these patients could have lived for years or decades.

A law that is now in the making obliges doctors who refuse to administer euthanasia to refer their patients to a “willing” colleague. Pressure on doctors to conform to patients’ (or in some cases, relatives’) wishes can be intense. Pressure from relatives, in combination with a patient’s concern for the well-being of his beloved, is in some cases an important factor behind a euthanasia request. Not even the review committees, despite hard and conscientious work, have been able to halt these developments.

I used to be a supporter of legislation. But now, with 12 years of experience, I take a different view. At the very least, wait for an honest and intellectually satisfying analysis of the reasons behind the explosive increase in the numbers. Is it because the law should have had better safeguards? Or is it because the mere existence of such a law is an invitation to see assisted suicide and euthanasia as a normality instead of a last resort?

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion...178/story.html