Czech government rejects euthanasia bill again.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Straka Academy

On July 27, 2020 the Czech Republic government rejected euthanasia for the third time. According to an article published by BRNO Daily news:

On July 27th, the Czech government blocked another parliamentary effort to legalise euthanasia... The bill was proposed by a group of deputies from ANO and the Pirate Party including Věra Prochazkova (ANO) and Lukáš Bartoň (Piráti). The proposal was submitted by the Ministry of Justice and Chairwoman of the Legislative Council. 

In Czech Republic, euthanasia is classed as murder. The deputies proposed a legal framework for the legalisation of assisted suicide for adult patients with terminal conditions due to injury or illness who do not wish to undergo palliative care, provided they made the decision themselves, voluntarily and without coercion... Prochazkova, the main proponent of the bill, said that she was influenced by her personal experience, and by the similar law passed in the Netherlands in 2002.

The BRNO Daily news article stated that opposition to euthanasia was based on the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

Critics have argued that the bill is inconsistent with the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, which stipulates that everyone has the right to life and to not be deprived of their life. The Ministry of Social Affairs said that the proposed bill did not contain enough safeguards against human error or infringement of the law.

President Milos Zeman

Czech Republic President Milos Zeman stated in 2019 that if euthanasia were passed, he would veto the bill.

In 2016, the last time the Czech Republic rejected euthanasia, the Prague Daily Monitor published comments on Twitter by Deputy PM Pavel Belobradek (KDU-CSL) and Industry and Trade Minister Jan Mladek (CSSD):

"The bill, if passed, could result in the killing of people," Mladek wrote. 

Agriculture Minister Marian Jurecka (KDU-CSL) wrote that he rejects a simple solution of euthanasia. "I support help, loving care, solidarity and a high-level palliative care, this is a solution,"

The Prague Daily Monitor reported:

The government... believes that it is unsuitable for the Czech Republic to follow the example of the countries where euthanasia is legal, which the authors of the bill suggest. 

"In these countries, cases of clear misuse of euthanasia have been proved, aimed to vacate hospital beds, as well as cases of family members pushing for euthanasia for dubious reasons, and also unpunished cases of the failure to observe the conditions set by law," 

A similar bill on euthanasia, submitted by a senator, was turned down by the Czech upper house in 2008.

The Czech government needs to focus on caring for people and continue to reject killing people.

Czech Republic government cabinet rejects euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Prague Daily Monitor reported that the Czech government cabinet rejected, a deputies' bill that would have legalized euthanasia. According to the Daily Monitor: 

the cabinet said it goes counter to the coalition agreement in which the government parties, the Social Democrats (CSSD), ANO and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), pledged not to pass anything that would be incompatible with the protection of life from the conception until its natural end. 

The bill on dignified death has been submitted by six deputies.  

The final decision will be up to parliament. 

Straka Academy

The Daily Monitor published comments on Twitter by Deputy PM Pavel Belobradek (KDU-CSL) and Industry and Trade Minister Jan Mladek (CSSD):

"The bill, if passed, could result in the killing of people," Mladek wrote. 

Agriculture Minister Marian Jurecka (KDU-CSL) wrote that he rejects a simple solution of euthanasia. "I support help, loving care, solidarity and a high-level palliative care, this is a solution," 

According to the Prague Daily Monitor:

The government... believes that it is unsuitable for the Czech Republic to follow the example of the countries where euthanasia is legal, which the authors of the bill suggest. 

"In these countries, cases of clear misuse of euthanasia have been proved, aimed to vacate hospital beds, as well as cases of family members pushing for euthanasia for dubious reasons, and also unpunished cases of the failure to observe the conditions set by law," 

A similar bill on euthanasia, submitted by a senator, was turned down by the Czech upper house in 2008.

In April 2015, a Czech nurse confessed to killing 6 patients to decrease her workload.

Czech nurse kills 6 patients to decrease her workload.

By Alex Schadenberg

International Chair - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Vera Maresova

A nurse in the Czech Republic has admitted to killing 6 people with a massive dose of potassium in order to decrease her workload.

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Vera Maresova, 50, confessed to killing five women and one man over a four-year period at a hospital in Rumburk in the Czech Republic.

The Daily Mail article stated:

Dubbed 'Nurse Death' by local media, Maresova was initially arrested over the death of a 70-year-old woman last August, but has now admitted killing five more people between 2010 and 2014 following a police investigation. 

According to the prosecution, Maresova injected the potassium straight into the blood stream of her six elderly patients, which caused them to suffer heart failure and eventually death. 

All of her victims were already in the intensive care unit at the hospital and it is believed Maresova thought their deaths would simply be attributed to natural causes.

Rumburk Hospital

According to the Daily Mail Prosecutor Frantisek Stibor said:

'She is not insane and knew exactly what she was doing. Therefore she is fit to stand trial. 

'She used her knowledge of medicine to cause malfunctions in heart rhythms which led to heart failure and death.' 

The first murder was in January 2010 and was followed by another at the end of 2011. 

In April 2012 she killed her third victim and three more between February and June 2014.

Maresova confessed to her crimes and will likely live the rest of her life in jail.

Maresova would not likely have been prosecuted in Belgium, where euthanasia was legalized in 2002.

A Belgian study in 2007 on the role of nurses in physician-assisted death found that of the 120 euthanasia deaths that nurses were involved in 14 nurses admitted to lethally injecting the patient. Belgian law does not permit nurses to do this. 

There have been no attempted prosecutions in Belgium for abuse of the euthanasia law.

Doctors admit euthanasia being applied in Czech hospitals

The following article refers to the abuse of morphine in order to cause the death of people in the Czech Republic.

Once again this article depicts a false compassion. A true compassion would lead to a better training in the proper use of analgesics so that physicians stop feeling that they need to abuse the use of morphine.

Further to that, the article presents a very sloppy system for caring for people who are supposedly in the dying phase. People should never be viewed as simply bodies needing an overdose, etc but rather as people who are in need of good and proper care.

I really hope that this article is an exageration of the reality.

Alex Schadenberg

Doctors admit euthanasia being applied in Czech hospitals

http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/zpravy/doctors-admit-euthanasia-being-applied-in-czech-hospitals-press/394479

Prague - Some doctors admit that euthanasia is being applied in the Czech Republic not to prolong patients' sufferings in hopeless cases, though it is officially illegal, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) reports today.

It is called "wild euthanasia" and it means that doctors intentionally provide the treatment that leads to the patient's death with the aim to terminate his/her suffering, doctor Zdenek Kalvacha told MfD.

A doctor, for instance, administers higher morphine doses to a patient dying of cancer, the daily adds.

MfD writes that some other doctors, too, admit a similar practice in Czech hospitals.

Being asked at a recent meeting of the Czech Doctors' Academy whether someone is convinced that euthanasia is not applied in the Czech Republic, no doctor raised his hand, MfD says.

Many doctors say the rules should be specified for the cases of patients whose further medical treatment is pointless and whose death is inevitable, the daily adds.

Political parties, too, are considering drafting such rules, the paper adds.

The Senate, upper house of Czech parliament rejected the legalisation of euthanasia last September.

Senator Vaclava Domsova (Independents' Association-European Democrats/SNS-ED) submitted a bill on "dignified death" but the upper house turned it down. Its critics, mainly doctors, warned that the bill would legalise intentional killing and could be abused.