Pays-Bas : suicide assisté à la carte.

En Hollande, un rapport élaboré par une association médicale suggère d'étendre la loi sur l’euthanasie aux personnes pour lesquelles la lassitude de vivre constitue une souffrance insupportable. Selon le directeur de l’Institut Lindeboom pour l'Éthique Médicale, Henk Jochemsen, ce document contient des éléments « dangereux ».

British Medical Journal, 08.01.2005 Utrecht Tony Sheldon [...]The conclusion has reopened a fierce debate over what constitutes grounds for requesting euthanasia, as it contradicts a landmark Supreme Court decision that a patient must have a "classifiable physical or mental condition." The 2002 ruling upheld a guilty verdict on a GP for helping his 86 year old patient die, even though he was not technically ill but obsessed with his physical decline and hopeless existence (BMJ 2003;326:71). The Dutch euthanasia law does not specifically state that a patient must have a physical or mental condition, only that a patient must be "suffering hopelessly and unbearably."

The new report does not rule on how doctors should respond if a patient without a classifiable condition should approach them for help but says that doctors believe that some cases of "suffering through living" could be judged "unbearable and hopeless" and therefore fall within the boundaries of the existing euthanasia law. The report argues that the Supreme Court criteria are unhelpful in defining the limits of medical practice in varied and complex cases. It is "an illusion," it argues, to suggest that a patient’s suffering can be "unambiguously measured according to his illness." [...]He said there was "enormous protest" from doctors to the Supreme Court’s ruling. "In more than half of cases we considered, doctors were not confronted with a classifiable disease. In practice the medical domain of doctors is far broader … We see a doctor’s task is to reduce suffering, therefore we can’t exclude these cases in advance. We must now look further to see if we can draw a line and if so where." His report recommends caution, saying that doctors currently lack sufficient expertise and that their roles remain unclear. It recommends drawing up protocols by which to judge "suffering through living" cases and collecting and analysing further data. In the meantime it recommends an "extra phase" to treatment, where therapeutic and social solutions can first be sought. Henk Jochemsen, director of the anti-euthanasia Lindeboom Institute for Medical Ethics, said that the report has dangerous signs, to the effect that "we as a society should say to people who feel their life has lost meaning: right you had better go away." [...] Op zoek naar normen voor het handelen van artsen bij vragen om hulp bij levensbeëindiging in geval van lijden aan het leven (In Search of Standards for the Treatment by Doctors of Requests for Help in Ending Life Because of Suffering Through Living) is accessible on the website of the Royal Dutch Medical Association, www.knmg.nl

http://www.guile.net/fr/nouvelles/actualites_lire.php?id=2961 20050111