Sunday, May 03, 2015

Treatment resistant depression and access to assisted dying

I have long been in favour of offering access to assisted dying to competent people suffering from treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Other than the occasional newspaper column or blog entry I didn't have time to actually write a proper peer reviewed paper on the issue. Well, that's finally rectified. It came out yesterday. I jointly authored it with Suzanne van de Vathorst of Amsterdam University's Medical Centre. Here's the abstract:

Competent patients suffering from treatment-resistant depressive disorder should be treated no different in the context of assisted dying to other patients suffering from chronic conditions that render their lives permanently not worth living to them. Jurisdictions that are considering, or that have, decriminalised assisted dying are discriminating unfairly against patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression if they exclude such patients from the class of citizens entitled to receive assistance in dying.

Ethical Progress on the Abortion Care Frontiers on the African Continent

The Supreme Court of the United States of America has overridden 50 years of legal precedent and reversed constitutional protections [i] fo...