BMJ  2008;336:181 (26 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39465.463356.DB

News

Row breaks out over German plan to test law on assisted suicide

Ned Stafford

1 Hamburg

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The head of the German Medical Association has strongly condemned plans by a retired urologist to help a terminally ill and suffering person to commit suicide to test the law in Germany. Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe warns that he would notify the legal authorities and ask for a prosecution if any such move took place.

In a 14 January newspaper interview Professor Hoppe said that his association does not want "medical doctor assisted suicide to become a medical treatment, because it is not compatible with our medical ethics and because patients would be deeply unsettled" (www.rp-online.de/public/article/aktuelles/wirtschaft/news/521016).

Professor Hoppe’s comments came after reports that Uwe-Christian Arnold, a retired urologist in Berlin who also co-chairs Dignitate-Deutschland, the German branch of the Swiss right to die organisation Dignitas, planned to participate in an assisted suicide to force the issue into German courts as a precedent case.

In an interview with the BMJ Professor . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ