The 15th international conference of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies is scheduled to take place on Thursday, September 30 through Sunday, October 3, in the Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo.
April 2004 issue of the newsletter of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies (no 45).
The new parliamentary move to allow British physicians to assist terminally-ill patients to end their lives cleared its first hurdle in the House of Lords, in London, on March 10th.
The Isle of Man police take “No further action” in the case against Patricia Kneen and Dr.
Evelyn Martens of the Right-to-Die Network of Canada was arrested and charged with aiding an counselling the suicides of two terminally ill individuals. The trial is expected to begin in September 2004.
The debate by the Council of Europe on the Marty report has been postponed til april 2004.
Friends at the End (FATE), Scotland has recently established a
web-site giving information about this Glasgow, Scotland based
RTD Society.
The website can be found here .
January 15th 2004, a new Assisted Dying Bill was introduced to the British House of Lords by Lord Joffe, a retired human rights lawyer, and a member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of England and Wales.
The Hemlock Society USA intends to change its name to one more acceptable to legislators. But it cannot make up its mind to what. When Hemlock’s founders adopted the name in l980 it was meant as an allusion to the poison weed used by ancient Greek and Roman civilizations for suicide. In literature, particularly Shakespeare, the ‘taking of hemlock’ referred to rational suicide. American legislators apparently see odious connotations to Socrates taking hemlock because the Roman Senate condemned to him to death or exile for treasonous teachings.
(From The Guardian in London, April 16, 2003)
Campaigners for euthanasia claimed yesterday that a failure to make assisted suicide legal in Britain was driving people abroad to end their lives. The case of Robert and Jennifer Stokes, a couple from Bedfordshire who were helped to die by a Swiss euthanasia group, has renewed concern about “suicide tourism”. Mrs. Stokes is believed to have attempted suicide before.
Regarding the last ‘famous’ Dutch case (Brongersma/Sutorius), on December 24, 2002, the Netherlands Supreme Court confirmed the verdict by the Court of Appeal Amsterdam, that declared GP Sutorius guilty of assisting in the suicide of former senator Brongersma, but did not give him a sentence. The court ruled that “the GP acted conscientiously and carefully”, but he should not have helped, because the senator was “not ill” (the courts: there was no medical classification of his condition). Further appeal is not possible.
In the two-week-long first session of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, just closed in Beijing, Congress delegate Huang Zhong-cheng urged implementation of a pilot scheme for practicing euthanasia in Beijing. NPC delegates have been requesting legislation concerning euthanasia since 1992.
China defines euthanasia as “To end the life of a terminal patient in an humanitarian way, for the request of the relatives of the patient or the patient who is suffering severely both mentally and physically, agreed by physician.”
