Euthanasia: the Safeguard Illusion

therefore administers the lethal substance. In physician-assisted suicide (pas) on the other hand, a person self-administers a lethal substance prescribed by a physician. To date, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg have legalized euthanasia 1,2. The laws in the Netherlands and Luxembourg also allow pas. In the United States, the states of Oregon and Washington legalized pas in 1997 and 1999 respectively, but euthanasia remains illegal 3. The situation in the state of Montana is currently unclear; a bill legalizing pas was passed by the state legislature in 2010, but was recently defeated by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee. In the Netherlands, euthanasia and pas were formally legalized in 2001 after about 30 years of public debate 1. Since the 1980s, guidelines and procedures for performing and controlling euthanasia have been developed and adapted several times by the Royal Dutch Medical Association in collaboration with that country’s judicial system. Despite opposition, including that from the Belgian Medical Association, Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002 after about 3 years of public discourse that included government commissions. The law was guided by the Netherlands and Oregon experiences, and the public was assured that any defects in the Dutch law would be addressed in the Belgian law. Luxembourg legalized euthanasia and pas in 2009. Switzerland is an exception, in that assisted suicide, although not formally legalized, is tolerated as a result of a loophole in a law dating back to the early 1900s that decriminalizes suicide. Euthanasia, however, is illegal 4. A person committing suicide may do so with assistance as long as the assistant has no selfish motives and does not stand to gain personally from the death. Unlike other jurisdictions that require euthanasia or assisted suicide to be performed only by physicians, Switzerland allows non-physicians to assist suicide. In all these jurisdictions, safeguards, criteria, and procedures were put in place to control the practices, to ensure societal oversight, and to prevent euthanasia and pas from being abused or misused 5. Some criteria ABSTRACT