German nurse may have killed more than 100 patients.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Niels Högel

A Reuters News article is reporting that Niels Högel's, the German nurse who was convicted of killing 2 patients between 2000 - 2005, is now suspected to have killed at least 102 people. According to Reuters:

He has confessed to some killings, but police said in August that he could not remember all the details of his actions, prompting them to exhume the remains of 134 people with links to Niels H. to identify further victims. 

The investigation has now turned up evidence leading authorities to suspect Niels H. killed 38 people at a clinic in the northern German city of Oldenburg and 62 at one in nearby Delmenhorst, Oldenburg police and the city’s public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Thursday. 

That is in addition to two counts of murder for which an Oldenburg court sentenced him in 2015.

In August, German police indicated that Högel's was responsible for at least 86 deaths, Reuters suggests that the death count may continue to rise.

If anyone thinks that Högel's murders could have been prevented if assisted death was legal and regulated in Germany, think again.

None of the euthanasia laws have a mechanism to prevent this type of abuse of the law and all of the euthanasia laws require doctor who lethally inject a person to self-report the death.

A recent Netherlands study indicated that in 2015, 431 assisted deaths were done without explicit request while a Belgian study indicated that in 2013, at least 1000 assisted deaths were done without explicit request.

Medical killing is a world-wide phenomenon.

Suspected medical abuse/murder cases are usually not reported since the medical system lacks effective oversight. When abuse is uncovered, they rarely report the problem to the legal authorities based on fear of lawsuits as in the Elizabeth Wettlauffer case in Ontario.

In December 2016, in Italy, an emergency room anaesthetist Leonardo Cazzaniga, 60, and nurse Laura Taroni, 40, were arrested for the deaths of at least five patients but prosecutors were examining the medical files of more than 50.

Charles Cullen, a nurse who was also a medical serial killer in the United States. known as the 'Angel of Death' murdered at least 40 patients to become one of America's worst serial killers spoke from prison to chillingly claim: 'I thought I was helping.'

Dr Michael Swango is believed to have killed 35 - 60 patients, and similar to Cullen, he was simply asked to resign, or moved to another medical center. Aino Nykopp-Koski is a nurse who was convicted of killing 5 patients in Finland. In March, 2013 Dr Virginia Soares de Souza was arrested in Brazil and is suspected of killing 300 patients. Then there is Dr Harold Shipman, who was convicted of killing 15 people in England but is suspected to have killed between 250 and 400 of his patients. Then there is the case of William Melchert-Dinkel, the Minnesota nurse who was convicted of 2 counts of assisted suicide for counselling depressed people to commit suicide.

German nurse may have killed 84 people.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

If you think that safeguards can control euthanasia or that legalizing euthanasia will eliminate medical killings, think again.

First: Euthanasia laws lack effective third-party oversight. All of the laws require two doctors to approve euthanasia or assisted suicide (in Canada nurse practitioners can approve) and once death occurs all of the laws require the physician who carries out the act to self-report the act. No third-party oversight or witness at the time of the death is required. Physicians and nurse practitioners do not self-report abuse of the law.

Second: The abuse of the law that already occurs is usually not reported because the medical system lacks effective oversight and when abuse is uncovered, they rarely report the problem to the legal authorities, often based on fear of lawsuits. Just read about the Elizabeth Wettlauffer case in Ontario.

Now, a former German nurse who was convicted of killing 2 patients between 2000 - 2005 and later found responsible for 33 deaths is suspected of killing 84 people. Deutche Well news reported:

Niels Högel 

Following a three-year probe into all patients under Niels Högel's care, investigators revealed on Monday that the former nurse was responsible for 84 more deaths than initially thought. 

Högel, who is already serving two separate prison sentences, was found to have injected patients with cardiovascular medication at hospitals in the northern towns of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst between 1999 and 2005. His aim was to induce heart failure or circulatory collapse before successfully resuscitating his patients to impress his colleagues. 

He was sentenced in 2008 to seven-and-a-half years for attempted murder after he was discovered trying to give an overdose to a patient. He was then jailed for life in 2015 after being found guilty on six counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and one charge of battery after his "trick" failed to work. 

However, prosecutors alleged that he had likely killed many more people but kept the charges low to make their case easier to prove. 

During the 2015 trial, Högel also admitted to a psychologist to killing 30 people while working at the clinic in Delmenhorst, having injected the medication into at least 60 patients. Last year, prosecutors estimated the total number of deaths to be 43.

Over three years, investigators said they exhumed and probed 134 bodies for the traces of Högel's cardiovascular medication, raising the number of suspected killings to a further 84.

Oldenburg Police Chief Johann Kühme said the sheer scale of Högel's crimes "leaves us speechless," adding that some cases will never be proved as the bodies had since been cremated. "And as if all that were not enough, we must realize that the real dimension of the killings by Högel is likely many times worse."

The police chief also faulted local health authorities who failed to act as it allegedly came apparent that the death rate at Delmenhorst hospital's intensive care unit almost doubled while Högel worked there. "If the people responsible at the time, particularly at the Oldenburg clinic but also later in Delmenhorst, hadn't hesitated to alert authorities - for example police, prosecutors -" Högel could have been apprehended sooner, Kühme said.

In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal since 2001, a study of deaths in the Netherlands found that 431 people died an assisted death without explicit request in 2015. 

A study examining deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, found that there were more than 1000 assisted deaths without explicit request in 2013. 

The only way to protect people is by prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide and closely monitoring the medical use of drugs and potential medical abuse.

Where did Nazi doctors learn their ethics? From a textbook

This article was written by Michael Cook and published by Mercatornet on May 2, 2017. 

Note from Alex Schadenberg:
Many people are concerned about the influence that Peter Singer has had on bioethics. When you read this article, you will agree that your concerns about Peter Singer are valid. 

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind of ethics. 

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind - See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/19727#sthash.oTesqVGv.dpuf

They had plenty of ethics. It was just the wrong kind - See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/19727#sthash.oTesqVGv.dpuf

Physician Karl Brandt (center)

By Michael Cook

German medicine under Hitler resulted in so many horrors – eugenics, human experimentation, forced sterilization, involuntary euthanasia, mass murder – that there is a temptation to say that “Nazi doctors had no ethics.”

However, according to an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Florian Bruns and Tessa Chelouche (from Germany and Israel, respectively), this was not the case at all.

In fact, medical ethics was an important part of the curriculum for German medical students between 1939 and 1945. Nazi officials established lectureships in every medical school in Germany for a subject called “Medical Law and Professional Studies” (MLPS).

There was no lack of ethics. It was just the wrong kind of ethics.

The focus of the scholars’ study is Rudolf Ramm, a German general practitioner who became the pre-eminent purveyor of Nazi medical ethics during the War years. He was an ardent anti-Semite who demanded a “complete solution to the Jewish Question in Europe” and a “radical elimination of the Jews.”

Ramm was editor-in-chief of the journal of the German Medical Association, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, and published a textbook, Ärztliche Rechts- Standeskunde (Medical Law and Health). The textbook sold out within a year.

Ramm did not survive to be a defendant in the famous “doctors trial” in 1947. He was tried and shot by the Soviets in August 1945. His book was banned a few months later.

What did medical students learn during the Nazi era? According to Bruns and Chelouche, it was “the unequal worth of human beings, the moral imperative of preserving a pure Aryan people, the authoritarian role of the physician, the individual’s obligation to stay healthy, and the priority of public health over individual-patient care.”

However repugnant this now sounds, Ramm believed that the Nazi ideology was responsible for the “reinstatement of a high level of professional ethics.” He was delighted that “the profession had been extensively cleansed of politically unreliable elements foreign to our race” (that is, German-Jewish physicians).

Bruns and Chelouche sum up the pillars of his ethics as follows:

Ramm saw 3 distinct dangers facing the German people: “racial miscegenation,” a declining birthrate, and the “growth of inferior elements” in the German population. He traced the origins of these perceived dangers to a “disregard for the laws of nature,” caused by church dogma and socialist ideologies. Ramm denounced any form of health care for “hereditarily inferior” people and asserted that every person in Nazi Germany had a moral duty to stay healthy.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see Nazi “medical ethics” for what they are: a flimsy rationalisation to allow physicians to participate in imposing the rule of the Third Reich upon Europe. Their collaboration with the regime was shameful, to say nothing of the horrors of experimentation on unwilling prisoners and mass extermination.

But Bruns and Chelouche are less interested in raking over the coals than in drawing lessons for today’s doctors. Doctors must resist the temptation to believe that they are much more ethical than in “the bad old days,” they observe. Ethical standards do not always progress; sometimes they can regress.

In fact, in the Weimar Republic, ethical standards for human experimentation were “remarkably advanced,” they write. In 1931 the government had responded to scandals in medical practice by setting down clear guidelines. In some respects, they were even stricter than the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics which was adopted after World War II. Non-therapeutic research was “under no circumstances permissible without consent,” a cost-benefit analysis and animal experimentation were required to minimize the risk to humans; publication of results had to respect human dignity, and so on.

So the Nazi doctors could hardly plead ignorance of humane ethical standards. In fact, the authorities did not even bother to repeal the Weimar legislation. They simply redefined the subject of experimentation to exclude concentration camp inmates.

Bruns and Chelouche conclude with this warning:

It is important to realize that ethical reasoning can be corrupted and that teaching ethics is, in itself, no guarantee of the moral integrity of physicians. The history of bioethics reveals that the professional ethos of physicians is more fragile than we might believe because it depends on the moral zeitgeist and politico-social circumstances, both of which are subject to change …

Today’s danger is imposing extreme individualism upon medical practice so that ethics is defined by the single standard of autonomy. As long as a patient acts “autonomously,” with informed consent, anything goes: from abortion, to self-mutilating surgery, to euthanasia.

And in the name of this ideology, every kind of injustice can be rationalised. Today, as in Nazi Germany, the medical profession is in danger of being purged of “politically unreliable elements” – conscientious objectors.

But autonomy is only one dimension of human well-being. It is compatible with loneliness, unhappiness, physical suffering, cruelty, and anti-social behaviour – as Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada are discovering while legal euthanasia expands its reach.

In many cases, today’s medical ethicists looking for examples of corrupt ethical reasoning need not google for images of Rudolf Ramm; they can simply take a selfie.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet. This appeared at mercatornet.com and is reposted with permission.

German court approves access to suicide drugs.

Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have sad news. Yesterday Germany's federal court decided that "in extreme circumstances" the refusal of a suicide drug is illegal.

According to a DW news story:

The purchase of deadly drugs in Germany is forbidden, but the court found that the right of self-determination meant there should be exceptions for extreme cases "if, because of their intolerable life situation, they had freely and seriously decided to end their lives" and if there were no palliative-medical alternatives.

The German Foundation for the Protection of Patients opposed the decision. DW news reported:

The German Foundation for the Protection of Patients said the judgment was "a blow to the cause of suicide prevention in Germany". Board member Eugen Brysch said the definition of "what an intolerable condition of suffering is remains open." Suffering is "neither objectively measurable nor legally universally defined."

Germany's federal court has opened the door to the legalization of assisted suicide. It is very sad how we forget our history and once again give legal power to allow one person to be involved with causing the death of others.

In November 2015 the German Bundestag passed a law prohibiting the commercialization of assisted suicide. On January 27, 2017, the German Bundestag honoured the victims of the German euthanasia program.

Nazi euthanasia victims honoured in German Bundestag

This article was published by BioEdge on January 28, 2017.

B

German Bundestag

y Michael Cook

On January 27, 2017, the German Bundestag [Parliament] commemorated the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp. This year the focus was placed on the 300,000 disabled victims of the notorious Aktion T-4 euthanasia program.

Under Aktion T-4, beginning in 1939, people were gassed or given a lethal injection and cremated in six killing facilities in Germany and Austria. This helped the Nazi regime to refine its system for processing millions, rather than “just” thousands, of victims.

During the ceremony, a few relatives of victims related their stories. A philosopher, Hartmut Traub, narrated the story of his 27-year-old uncle Benjamin, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which had virtually became a death sentence in Nazi Germany.

In 1941 he was taken on an “outing” with 60 other inmates of a mental institution to Hadamar where they were executed with carbon monoxide. Gold teeth and the brains of more interesting “specimens” were removed.

“For six months, the dark clouds from the crematorium hung over the city, plainly visible for all to see,” said Hartmut Traub.

After the war many families tried to repress the stories of their murdered relatives.

German T-4 Euthanasia Memorial

“For a long time, the euthanasia victims were the forgotten victims,” Maike Rotzoll, Deputy Director of the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine in Halle, told Deutsche Welle. 

“That’s why it’s enormously important for us that this ceremony took place in the Bundestag. I think it’s also enormously important for the relatives, who experienced the topic being taboo for so many years, to be allowed to speak and for this group of victims to be honored in this way.”

• Peter Saunders: Lets not forget the lessons of history and the leading role that doctors played in the holocaust.
• Wesley Smith: Memorial to German Euthanasia victims.

Book: The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis.

This talk was delivered on November 23, 2016 on the occasion of the launch of a new book, “The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis,” by Fr. Dan Utrecht, an Oratorian

By Charles Lewis

I’m very honored to be asked to say a few words tonight. Not just because I know author Fr. Dan Utrecht and I’m a parishioner here but also because I have always had a deep admiration for the Germans who refused to buckle under the mass hysteria of those times, especially from 1933 when Hitler came to power until May 1945, when the war ended and Nazism was defeated.

I will never be able to fully comprehend how much courage it took to speak out against one of the most ruthless regimes in modern history.

One German, Bishop of Münster Clemens August Graf von Galen, we are celebrating tonight, thanks to the great work of our Fr. Dan.

Order the book: “The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis,” for $29.95 through Tan Books.

Those who refused to go along with the Nazis, who dared to speak out, were few. To go along was relatively easy. March with the others, say the Heil Hitler with a bit of enthusiasm and for the rest, including pretending your good Jewish neighbor of many years was not really being hauled away, would allow you a form of peace or at least safety. I say this not with contempt. Not only did you risk your own freedom and even your own life for objecting but the Nazis made sure that dissenters knew their families would also suffer terribly.

For devout Christians, who believed in the Truth of Christ, the torment of the times was horrific as they knew they were becoming an ever-smaller, irrelevant minority. Even clinging to basic human decency, was to enter a most frightening place – especially if one decided to speak out or write about their views.

That is why the names of those who refused to stand by, still shine so brightly, for they were beacons while the world around them fell into the pitch black of unmitigated evil.

I

Hans & Sophie Scholl

am sure Blessed Clemens von Galen would not mind being mentioned among some of the other Germans whose public acts of defiance, and just simple decency, led to their deaths: The White Rose, young students from Munich who were executed for their anti-Nazi beliefs, including Sophie Scholl and her brother, Hans. There was the Protestant Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, who also railed against euthanasia, and the lesser-known FRANZ JÄGERSTÄTTER, an ordinary man who refused to put on the military uniform of a godless state and paid the ultimate price. He was declared a martyr.

It’s worth remembering, even briefly, what happened during the time of the Nazis. We all know about the camps and the catastrophic loss of life both military and civilian. These things did not come out of thin air. Rather, it started when men decided they could replace God or that their perverted ideas made them into a kind of prophet.

Human life was valued on a person’s utility. The idea of all of us being respected as children of God, worthy of love and respect, regardless of one’s physical or mental state or age, was an idea that offended the Nazi agenda. It was a sign of weakness and weakness was considered a stumbling block to world domination and extermination. I’m not sure how those who continued to pretend to be true Christians, while being in step with Nazi marching songs, ever read the Sermon on the Mount without feeling profound shame.

Those considered unfit to contribute to the national program were called Useless Eaters, probably one of the ugliest terms ever invented but effective when the Nazis were pushing their euthanasia program — which you will learn more about by reading this important book being launched tonight.

The Nazis came up with insane racial theories in which there was a master race and subhumans. These untermenschen were not considered actually human. They were biological mistakes something like lab rats or beasts of burden: subjecting these subhumans to every form of degradation, to torture, to medical experiments or simply worked to death.

Those who were opposed to the Nazis were almost all Christians. What they all understood was that Hitler was a pagan and Germany was destroying itself on his behalf. God was being blotted by men in brown and black shirts with thumping boots who gave full rein to their worst impulses.

The Nazis believed that Christianity was at its root a Jewish, decadent religion and that Jesus was a Jew and anything Jewish was corrupt. Christianity was unmanly. It felt too much. It cared too much for those in need. It contained compassion – the last thing the Nazis needed to carry out their goals.

How can someone euthanize a child because they are not perfect when they feel compassion? Better those pagans, not bogged down by Christian love, to do the job.

They saw Christians as a degenerate faith that put its stock in an invisible God rather than the power of the State. There was even an attempt to form a German National Church. It got rid of the Old Testament, too Jewish, and erased all signs of Judaism from the new, except as the killers of Christ. Their Christ was a blonde Aryan god sent to destroy the Jews.

But True Christians never lost sight that what was happening around them was the corruption of all that was good. Somehow they never forgot that truth is eternal and would one day outlast the horrors around them. Even to have that kind of faith in those times was miraculous.

Cardinal von Galen

This past August 3rd , marked the 75th anniversary of when Blessed Clemens condemned from his Cathedral’s pulpit the Nazi euthanasia program. He said: 

“If you establish and apply the principle that you can ‘kill’ unproductive human beings, then woe betide us all when we become old and frail!. . .  Do you, do I have the right to live only as long as we are productive?. . .  Nobody would be safe anymore. Who could trust his physician? It is inconceivable what depraved conduct, what suspicion could enter family life if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, adopted, carried out.”

He also said: 

“The dear God placed me in a position in which I had a duty to call black 'black' and white 'white'.”

In speaking out he risked death. One Gestapo leader wanted him hanged. Other Nazi leaders, fearing his popularity, said wait till we have won the war.

He also spoke out against racial programs — something else that angered the Nazis and drove them to homicidal anger.

You should not only buy this book because our Fr. Dan wrote it, but because we all need men like Blessed Clemens in our heart and in our lives. He and others like him are whom we should turn to when we fear the mockery of the secular society because we stand up for life.

Order the book: “The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared Against the Nazis,” for $29.95 through Tan Books.

We have nothing to be afraid of. No one will hurt us. We have each other. We still live in a democracy.. at least the appearance of one for now.

The next time you feel constrained to speak the truth about euthanasia …. please, please, remember Blessed Clemens von Galen who knew the risks of speaking out but did it anyway because there is nothing, absolutely nothing more important than the Truth.

Brain tissue from Nazi euthanasia victims discovered at German research institute.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

T4 euthanasia victims

The Jewish Times reported that the Max Planck Institute is trying to determine whether Jewish brain tissue was among the brain tissue from the Nazi T4 euthanasia program that was recently discovered at the German research institute.

The article by Raphael Ahran published on August 31 in the Jewish Times states:

Unburied remnants of brains taken from victims of the Nazi regime during World War II were recently discovered in a German research institute, where they had been experimented on until the 1960s. The Max Planck Institute told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that it was not yet clear whether any brain parts from Jews were among those found, and said it was in the midst of a full investigation into the case. 

The gruesome case, reminiscent of the monstrous work of Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele, was widely discussed in the Israeli media Wednesday, after Army Radio reported (Hebrew) that Jews were among the men and women whose brains were used for research purposes during and long after World War II. But a spokesperson for the Max Planck Institute said the identities of the victims were still unknown.

According to the article the brain tissue was used for experiments by German neuroscientist Julius Hallervorden who worked at the institute from 1938 until his death in 1965. The article refers to Hallervorden as an enthusiatic Nazi.

The article explains that 700 brain preparations from euthanasia victims were found in the 1980's. The Max Planck Institute decided to bury the ones that were prepared from 1939 - 1945. In 1990 they erected a memorial to the euthanasia victims. In 2001 the institute stated that they received 100 brain preparations from the Hallervorden estate that came from 35 cases between 1938 - 1967. The article then states that 3 of the 35 cases were known to have been victims of the Nazi T4 euthanasia program.

Max Planck institute's communication chief, Christina Beck told The Times of Israel that:

the process of identifying the victims was ongoing. 

“This project will take a long time because it is to be linked with detailed research into the victims,” 

“Only afterwards will we be able to give say to what extent also Jewish patients were victim of the Nazis’ euthanasia murders.”

History is repeating itself under the slogans of choice and autonomy. Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide gives doctors, the right in law, to cause the death of their patients.

Further to the slogans, euthanasia for psychiatric conditions, euthanasia for people with dementia and euthanasia/organ donation have now become accepted in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Switzerland assisted suicides jump 34% in 2015.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Swissinfo reported that there were 782 assisted suicide deaths at the Exit suicide clinic in 2015 up from 583 assisted suicide deaths in 2014. In 2014, the total number of assisted suicide deaths in Switzerland, including deaths at Dignitas and the Eternal Spirit clinic, was around 836. 

The data indicates that there was a 34% increase in assisted suicide deaths in 2015. Combined with the 27% increase in assisted suicide deaths in 2014, deaths at the suicide clinic have increased by more than 70% in two years.

The article indicated that more women than men are dying by assisted suicide:

Of the deceased, 55% were women and 45% men, 

The average age of each person at the time of death was 77.4. The patients lived mainly in the cantons of Zurich, Bern, Aargau, St Gallen, Basel City and Basel Country

In May, 2014, a Swiss suicide clinic extended assisted suicide to healthy elderly people who are living with physical or psychological pain. This decision has led to an increase in deaths.

Pietro D'Amico

In August 2015 a healthy depressed British woman died by assisted suicide in Switzerland.

In February 2014, Oriella Cazzanello, an 85 year-old healthy woman died at a Swiss suicide clinic. The letter she sent her family stated that she was unhappy about how she looked.

In April 2013, Pietro D’Amico, a 62-year-old magistrate from Calabria Italy, died by assisted suicide at a suicide clinic in Basel Switzerland. His autopsy showed that he had a wrong diagnosis.

A 2014 Swiss study found that people who died at Swiss suicide clinics had no underlying illness in 16% of the cases.

In response to the increased assisted suicide deaths at the Swiss suicide clinics, the German Bundestag voted in November 2015 to prohibit the commercialization of assisted suicide.

Germany prohibits the commercialization of assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The German Bundestag has approved assisted suicide for altruistic reasons. The law is similar to the Swiss law except that it prohibits the commercialization of assisted suicide.

The fact is that the Swiss law permits assisted suicide for altruistic reasons, but the groups that facilitate assisted suicide actually developed over time, rather than the law simply permitting it. Now that Germany officially permits assisted suicide, the question is how will it develop over time. The German RT news reported:

MPs in Germany have rejected a bill that would have made commercial assisted suicides legal, instead passing a new law punishing such practices with up to three years imprisonment, even if doctors perform the procedure to relieve suffering. 

The bill, which was upheld with 360 out of 602 votes, criminalizes organizations that assist patients in terminating their own lives for profit. It is meant to prevent the commercialization of the procedure as a “suicide business.” 

However, single instances of suicide assistance – by a doctor or relative – do not contradict the new law.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is concerned that now that the door is officially opened to assisted suicide, how long will it take for the courts or future parliaments to expand the law?

Germany has not legalized euthanasia.
 

Germany's Jewish community opposes assisted suicide, while the nation debates the issue.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The German Bundestag is scheduled to debate four assisted suicide proposals on Friday November 6. The Handelsblatt Global Edition reported, in a mostly pro-euthanasia article, that the four proposals range from complete liberalization to completely protecting people from euthanasia and assisted suicide. According to the article:

It’s encouraging how openly parliament is discussing the subject. Four motions will be on the agenda on November 6, when the Bundestag votes on how assisted suicide will be handled in the future. Proposals range from drastic penalties for anyone who assists in a suicide to complete liberalization of euthanasia, even for those who are not sick.

Germany's Health Minister, for instance, has stated that he supports a ban on the business of assisted suicide, such as occurs at the suicide clinics in Switzerland.

On Monday, Germany's Jewish community stated their opposition to the legalization of assisted suicide. According to the Jewish Times:

The Central Council of Jews in Germany said Monday that there must be no liberalization of assisted suicide in the country.

Josef Schuster

Central Council President Josef Schuster, a physician and member of the Central Ethics Committee of the German Medical Association, said:

“Seriously ill and elderly people should not be pushed to commit suicide,” 

“Assisted suicide must not become a regular service provided by doctors, an alternative to care for the dying,”

Schuster urged more support for hospice and palliative care.

In December 2014, the German Ethics Council rejected a change in the assisted suicide law. In September 2014, the memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program victims opened in Berlin.

The German Medical Association opposes euthanasia.

Further information:

• German ethics committee rejects the legalisation of assisted suicide.
• German Bundestag opposes assisted suicide groups.
• Memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program opens in Berlin.
• German Medical Association opposes euthanasia.
• The victims of Nazi euthanasia have been forgotten.

German Bundestag debates assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Assisted suicide was debated, today,  in the German Bundestag. The issue of assisted suicide has been debated for several years based on high profile cases of German citizens who have died by assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.

According to Deutsche Welle media, the German Bundestag were presented with four competing draft bills.

One lawmaker, Ulla Schmidt of the Social Democrats (SPD), voiced a concern that assisted suicide harkens back to the euthanasia program employed during the Nazi era, and called on her colleagues to proceed with caution. 

Katrin Göring-Eckhardt of the Green party said she was a worried about becoming the type of society that expects "the suffering elderly and those in need to bring an end to their own lives." 

Renate Künast of the Greens and Petra Sitte of the Left party, would completely remove legal hurdles to assisted suicide. 

Michael Brand of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Kerstin Griese of the SPD have prepared what they call a "middle way" between punishing those who provide euthanasia assistance and a complete deregulation of the process. 

Another CDU member, Patrick Sensberg, presented a draft that sought to criminalize any sort of assisted suicide. ... He spoke of the personal burdens some doctors would have to bear if they were required to help any terminally ill patient who wanted their assistance committing suicide.

The article also noted

German Bundestag

Opponents of Brand and Greise's draft said it would dissuade doctors from helping terminally ill patients seeking the right to die, in case angry relatives argue that doctors are making money from practicing.

The article concluded that

The only thing that all parties were able to agree on was the need to strengthen and spread the availability and services provided by hospices and palliative care wards.

In June 2012, the German Medical Association voted against euthanasia, to forbid euthanasia organizations and to urge the government to make the commercialization of suicide a crime.

It is expected that legislation will be passed by November 2015.

Euthanasia memorial

Last December, the German Ethics Council rejected a change in the assisted suicide law while supporting confidentiality between patients and physicians. 

Last November, the majority of the German Bundestag opposed assisted suicide groups such as those in Switzerland.

Last September, the memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program victims opened in Berlin.

• German ethics committee rejects the legalisation of assisted suicide.
• German Bundestag opposes assisted suicide groups.
• Memorial to the T-4 euthanasia program opens in Berlin.
• German Medical Association opposes euthanasia.
• The victims of Nazi euthanasia have been forgotten.

German ethics committee rejects the legalization of assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The German media has portrayed the decision by the German Ethics Council to reject the legalization of assisted suicide in a confusing manner.

According to Deutche Welle news the German Ethics Council rejected a change in the assisted suicide law, but suggested that in certain circumstances, the principle of confidentiality in the doctor-patient relationship should prevail. The article stated:

A majority of the members of Germany's Ethics Council rejects organized assisted suicide carried out with the help of doctors or other professionals, a statement issued on Friday said. 

Such services should be banned "when they are designed for repeated use and occur in a public context, giving them the apparent status of social normality," the statment said. 

However, although the council supported the view of the German Medical Association that helping a patient to die was not part of a doctor's duties, it said in exceptional circumstances a doctor's decision to assist in the suicide of a terminally ill person should be respected as part of a "confidential doctor-patient relationship" - even if the decision contradicted this principle.

The article then quoted Eugen Brysch, the chairman of the German Foundation for the Protection of Patients, who criticized the interpretation of the ethics body statement he stated:

"Hintze and Reimann have twisted the recommendations of the Ethics Council in their favor," he said, saying that a majority of the council's members rejected the idea that a patient had a right to a doctor's assistance with suicide.

Peter Hintze and Carola Reimann, who are members of the Bundestag, are introducing an assisted suicide bill in the German Bundestag in February.

German Parliament opposes assisted suicide groups.

By Alex Schadenberg
International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

German Bundestag

The German Bundestag debated the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide yesterday. German legislators did not debate a bill but rather they debated the general issues related to euthanasia and assisted suicide in order to determine the direction of future legislation. The media stated:

An unusual, highly emotional debate in German parliament ended with the majority expressing support for prohibiting organized assisted suicide. But not all representatives called for an outright ban of the practice.

The Majority of the members were opposed to the assisted suicide business. Volker Kauder (CDU) pointed to a recent development that he said is a cause for concern:

Organizations that offer assisted suicide services to their members. He said it was a "perversion" that, according to the amount in membership dues paid, assisted suicide services would be provided either immediately, or after a certain waiting period. "What does that have to do with humanity? " he asked. "Is that something we want to have in our society?"

According to the media, the German Health Minister opposes assisted suicide.

Health Minister Hermann Groehe said he opposed doctor assisting suicide. He said Germany should instead expand its network of hospices, so everyone has access to palliative care and the best painkillers while dying.

The media reported that the German Health Minister will likely introduce an assisted suicide bill in February 2015.

Germany debates assisted suicide.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The German parliament will be debating assisted suicide in their lower house today. According to the media, there is no bill before parliament, but the members are debating between their divided positions. The media has reported that:

No legislation is on the table yet, but five caucuses have developed on the issue, mostly crossing party lines. Some want to tighten rules against euthanasia, and others to legalize it as Belgium and the Netherlands have done. 

Germany currently permits doctors to cease life-extending treatment or to administer powerful and dangerous sedatives at a dying person‘s request, but assisting a suicide is a crime. The debate in the Bundestag was a first airing of the issue before bills are moved for debate.

According to the media, German Health Minister opposes euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Health Minister Hermann Groehe said he opposed doctors assisting suicide. He said Germany should instead expand its network of hospices, so everyone has access to palliative care and the best painkillers while dying.

The history of euthanasia in Germany should be enough to caution German parliamentarians.

Once you give physicians the right, in law, to cause death, ethical boundaries prohibiting the intentional killing of human beings are forever changed. The result is what we have seen in the Netherlands and Belgium where euthanasia began as a way of dealing with the "hard cases" and has now expanded to include euthanasia for children, people with dementia, people with psychiatric issues, loneliness, and for those who are "tired of living"

There is also significant number of unreported euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the under-reported cases that are often related to abuses that include the intentional assisted deaths without explicit request.

Memorial to German euthanasia victims.

By Wesley J Smith - published on Wesley Smith's blog on September 4, 2014.

Wesley Smith

It wasn’t “the Nazis” that caused the mass euthanasia deaths of disabled infants and adults. It was the eugenics ideology of the era that denied human exceptionalism.

We are heading in the same direction–although certainly not mass murder of the kind that happened in Germany circa 1939-1945.

But we too have accepted the idea that there is such a thing as an unlivable life. Indeed, in the Netherlands, babies born with serious or terminal disabilities are killed in their cribs by doctors.

In Belgium and the Netherlands, people with serious mental illnesses are euthanized–to widespread applause.

All of this reminds me of the words of Nuremberg Medical Investigator Leo Alexander, published in 1949 in the New England Journal of Medicine:

Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. 

This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick… 

The killing center is the reductio ad absurdum of all health planning based only on rational principles and economy and not on humane compassion and divine law. To be sure, American physicians are still far from the point of thinking of killing centers, but they have arrived at a danger point in thinking, at which likelihood of full rehabilitation is considered a factor that should determine the amount of time, effort and cost to be devoted to a particular type of patient on the part of the social body upon which this decision rests. 

At this point Americans should remember that the enormity of a euthanasia movement is present in their own midst.

Do you want to know what keeps me up at night? I don’t think that today’s NEJM would publish Alexander. I think it has embraced the very mindset against which he warned.

Memorial to the T4 euthanasia program victims opens in Berlin.

By Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Nazi euthanasia memorial

A memorial to the victims of the Nazi T-4 euthanasia program will open on Tuesday September 2 in Berlin near the central Tiergarten park.

The Times of Israel reported that a memorial to the approximate 300,000 physically and mentally disabled people who were murdered by the German regime between 1939 - 45, was approved in November 2011. “The Berlin government selected a design featuring a 24-meter-long (79-foot-long) transparent blue-tinted glass wall on a dark base.” The article stated that:

“The murder of tens of thousands of patients and residents of care homes was the first systematic mass crime of the National Socialist regime,” said Uwe Neumaerker, director of the memorial foundation. 

“It is considered a forerunner of the extermination of European Jews.”

The Times of Israel told the story of Benjamin Traub who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 16 and died in the gas chamber at the Hadamar Psychiatric hospital at 27.

In 1941, he was taken to a clinic nearby in the town of Hadamar which had been transformed into a factory of death. There, immediately after his arrival, Traub was sent to a gas chamber and murdered with carbon monoxide. 

His parents received word from the clinic that their son “died suddenly and unexpectedly of flu with subsequent meningitis.” 

Because he suffered from a “serious, incurable mental illness,” the letter continued, the family should see his death as “a relief.” 

Hans & Sophie Scholl

The article describes the T4 euthanasia program:

In an elegant villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4, more than 60 Nazi bureaucrats and like-minded doctors worked in secret under the “T4″ program to organize the mass murder of sanatorium and psychiatric hospital patients deemed unworthy to live. 

Between January 1940 and August 1941 doctors systematically gassed more than 70,000 people — the physically and mentally handicapped, those with learning disabilities, and people branded social “misfits” — at six sites across the German empire. 

Protests by members of the public and leaders of the Catholic Church ended the T4 program but the killing went on. 

From August 1941 until the war’s end in 1945, tens of thousands more died through forced starvation, neglect or fatal doses of painkillers such as morphine administered by purported caregivers.

The memorial will be opened by government leaders and Helmut Traub, Benjamin's nephew.

The Times of Israel article concludes:

Few of the killers were brought to justice after the war, despite high-profile trials like those of doctors at Nuremberg 1946-47, and many of the implicated medical professionals simply continued with their careers. 

Meanwhile both West Germany and the communist East did little to recognize or compensate survivors. 

Smaller plaques and markers have been installed at relevant sites across Germany in recent years but the T4 site is the first national memorial to honor these victims. 

The story ends by quoting from Berlin’s daily Der Tagesspiegel which “noted that unlike other groups, the ‘euthanasia’ victims lacked a ‘strong lobby.’

“Many were forgotten for decades and still are, even by their own families”