Effects Of Belgium Act On Euthanasia

Belgium, which is a well- known liberal country, is also well known throughout Europe for their controversy of physician assisted dying. Prior to 2002, Belgium had no legal guidelines in regards to euthanasia. In order to uncover how popular physician assisted dying is in Belgium in comparison to other European countries, a study conducted by Agnes van der Heide (2003), a professor in Decision making and care at the end of life, compared 20 480 deaths throughout six European countries. Of the deaths studied, van der Heide’s research uncovered that “administration of drugs with the explicit intention of hastening death varied between countries: about 1% or less in Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland, 82% in Belgium, and 40% in the Netherlands” (p. 349). Jean-Louis Vincent (2006), a professor of intensive care at the University of Brussels notes that “a study performed several years ago in Belgium which reviewed some 4,000 death certificates reported that death was unexpected in one-third of the cases, but that an end-of-life decision was made in 39.3% of the deaths” (p. 1908). Due to the fact that Belgium’s physicians had no regulations to follow prior to 2002, they had a strikingly high rate of death caused by administration of lethal drugs. This paper will …show more content…
However, Julia Nicol, who works at the Legal and Legislative Affairs Division for the Parliament of Canada notes that “unlike the law in the Netherlands, the Belgian Act does not regulate assisted suicide; it regulates only euthanasia, which it defines as an act of a third party that intentionally ends the life of another person at that person’s request” (section 6). Belgium’s Act on Euthanasia contains many detailed provisions. Tinne Smets (2010), senior researcher for the End-Of-Life Research Group discusses some of the many requirements in the Belgium Act on Euthanasia. Smets states