GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Victoria one step away from legalising euthanasia

sábado, 25 de noviembre de 2017

BioEdge: Victoria one step away from legalising euthanasia

BioEdge: Victoria one step away from legalising euthanasia

Bioedge

Victoria one step away from legalising euthanasia

by Michael Cook | 24 Nov 2017 | 1 comment

The Australian state of Victoria will soon legalise assisted suicide and euthanasia. On Wednesday, after a marathon 28-hour debate, the bill was finally approved in the upper house. A few amendments need to be ratified by the lower house next week, but that is expected to be a mere formality.

“Today’s all about emotion, and it’s all about compassion,” said Premier Daniel Andrews. “It’s about providing for those who have for too long been denied a compassionate end, and the control, the power, over the last phase of their journey.”

So, from June 19, 2019, just 18 months away, patients who have a life expectancy of less than six months, whose illness is incurable and causes intolerable suffering, who are over 18 and who live in Victoria will be able to request “voluntary assisted dying".

Legalisation in Victoria has ominous implications for other Australian states and territories. Similar bills have failed only by the narrowest of margins in South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. The “dying with dignity” lobby will be strengthened throughout the country. In Tasmania, Greens leader Cassy O’Connor immediately declared that she would introduce euthanasia legislation after next year’s state election, if she is returned.

Premier Andrews has consistently argued that the new law is the safest and most conservative scheme in the world.

Whether that is true or not, the law can always be amended to make it less conservative at some stage in the future. Its six-months life expectancy requirement can be amended to 12 months; its lower age limit of 18 can be changed to 12; its exclusion of mental illness as grounds for assisted dying can be waived.

Australia’s best-known euthanasia activist, Dr Philip Nitschke, has already complained that the law is far too conservative.

“It’s one of the world’s most unworkable end-of-life laws, which really won’t address the needs of a growing number of people who want control at the end of life. It’s not going to change the growing demand by elderly people to have access to their own choice.”

And an aged health care expert criticised the six-months life expectancy requirement because predicting when a patient will die is notoriously difficult. “This may result in patients who would have been eligible, had they received an accurate prognosis, continuing to suffer until they die, thereby depriving them of a good death,” wrote Colleen Cartwright in The Conversation.

Two former Prime Ministers, Paul Keating, of the Labor Party, and Tony Abbott, of the Liberal Party, openly opposed the bill.

Mr Abbott commented that “People’s lives have to be respected and this idea that we should end the lives of people who have failed our test of usefulness or have failed our test of what constitutes a decent quality of life is absolutely dead wrong. I hope that a future Victorian parliament might reverse this.”

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Good scientists have to be curious, tenacious, creative, intuitive and analytical. And it helps if they are humble, as well. At least that is my impression after reading about the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero (see below.)

Canavero is the latest figure in a long queue of talented scientists led astray just in the last couple of years by the glamour of celebrity. Dr Canavero would no doubt deny this, but the scientific community is very sceptical of his project to transplant living heads onto living bodies. And although he has not had a single success in this project, he is already dreaming of transplanting brains.

Celebrity and science can make a toxic mix. There is thoracic surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, another Italian, whose work on artificial tracheas was hyped as life-saving, but turned out to be fraudulent.

Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel was renowned for his controversial research. He had faked the results of his experiments and even his PhD. Michael LaCour made headlines for his surveys about changing minds about gay marriage. He never carried out the surveys.

Japanese stem cell scientist Haruko Obokata found an incredibly simple method for creating pluripotent stem cells. And in fact, it was incredible.

What makes extremely talented and creative researchers choose the path of a circus performer rather than a dedicated scholar? Everyone has a different story, but perhaps the ancient Anglo-French word vaynglorie (vainglory) expresses it best. Are there classes for post-graduate students in humility? Perhaps there ought to be.