Assisted living at the end of life.

摘要

The decision of a retired British doctor to end her lite at controversial euthanasia clinic in Switzerland has ignited the debate in the UK about physician-assisted uicide. 66-year-old Anne Turner, who had received a diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy a year ago,thavelled to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, where she wmmitted suicide on January 24. Dr Turner was at a relatively early stage of the disease-still able to walk, communicate, and eat. But after nursing her husband through motor neuron disease and seeing her mother die in pain due to inadequate morphine, she decided to travel to the Swiss clinic before she was totally incapacitated and unable to travel. Since it was established in 1998, Dignitas has helped more than 450 terminally ill people from across Europe to end their lives. In England and Wales, end-of-life decision-making is regulated by the criminal law, which means that anyone who helps a terminally ill person to end their life runs the risk of prosecution. A move to legalise assisted suicide is due to be reconsidered by the House of Lords in the Spring. Lordjoffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally III Bill is now in its third revision, having been extensively altered in light of recommendations from the House of Lords Select Committee. Based on the law in Oregon, USA, where the practice has been legal since 1997, the Joffe bill would allow doctors to prescribe medication that would enable a patient to end his or her own life To be eligible for an assisted death, patients must be mentally competent, have a terminal illness with only 6 months left to live, and be suffering unbearably as a result of their illness.