An investigation by the Swiss newspaper Beobachter has suggested that the assisted suicide business has made the head of Dignitas, Ludwig Minelli, a millionaire. Assisted suicide is lawful in Switzerland, but those assisting may not “selfishly” profit from the death. The Beobachter points out that Minelli declared that he had no taxable personal fortune in 1998, when he established Dignitas. Ten years lager, he has an annual income of about US$150,000 and a personal fortune of $1.8 million. How did he become so wealthy, asks Beobachter.

Andreas Brunner, a Swiss prosecutor, claims that Minelli is hiding behind Swiss privacy laws. ”We have never had a good look at their book-keeping but in order to demand that we need a good reason and a concrete example that there is something suspicious to investigate,” he said. “He has promised for years to make the accounts public but it has never happened.”

Soraya Wernli, a nurse who worked for Dignitas between 2003 and 2005, has accused it of being a “production line of death concerned only with profits”. Minelli acknowledges that selfishly assisting a suicide is illegal, but that profiting from it is not, so long as “you are helping and abetting without selfish motives”. London Telegraph, June 24 

Amongst scientists who promoted the use of human embryonic stem cells five years ago, in the middle of passionate debates in the US, Australia and elsewhere, few were more influential in shaping the ethical debate than Harvard’s George Q. Daley. “We must support the vitally important applications of embryonic stem cells to medical research,” he testified to a Congressional committee in 2005.

He contended that work on hESCs was so important that it could not be delayed. It was needed for cures, drug development and genetic research. The fact that years had passed without results made no difference. “The field of human embryonic stem cell research is a mere 7 years old, so it is premature to expect successful cell therapies to have already been delivered to patients.”

Now, he has transferred the same sense of urgency and excitement to an ethical non-controversial alternative to hESC research which he dismissed before the committee – induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). At the time, he said, “Although this strategy is worth pursuing, it is extremely high-risk, and may take years to perfect, and may never work as well as nuclear transfer, which we know we can practice today.”

However, in 2007 iPS cells were developed by Shinya Yamanaka. Professor Daley immediately stopped campaigning for hESCs. In an interview with Nature Medicine, he says, “Once Yamanaka solved the problem, I turned around virtually my entire program to take advantage of that breakthrough.”

In language remarkably similar to his 2005 testimony, he now promotes iPS cells: “There's no reason in my mind to think that we're not going to have iPS cells that function as well as embryonic stem cells.” Why haven’t there been any cures yet? “You can't hold the field to too high a standard. It's only been two years, and a lot of this stuff is in the pipeline.” ~ Nature Medicine, June

Derek Humphry’s well-known assisted-suicide manual “Final Exit” will now be distributed free to US public lending libraries upon request. The book (link to extract) explores various methods of committing suicide and assisting suicide for the dying, including self-starvation, inert gases and lethal drug dosages. The book begins with a note of caution to readers who are suicidal, stating that the book is meant for those who are "hopelessly physically ill".

Humphry states that the true intention of "Final Exit" is "explaining the right of a terminally ill person with unbearable suffering, or one with advanced degenerative condition, to know how to choose to die". As reported in BioEdge in May, a new edition of the book was released earlier in the year.

Humphry explained on his blog that a large donation to the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Association (ERGO) meant that complimentary copies of the book could be distributed to public lending libraries, whose acquisition budgets had been cut “severely”.

Women in their late 30s are freezing their eggs because they have not yet found “Mr Right”, research indicates. Half of the women surveyed by a Belgian clinic presented at a fertility conference intended to freeze their eggs to take the pressure off finding a partner. A third froze their eggs as an “insurance policy” against infertility.

A separate UK survey found that many students would also consider the procedure to focus on a career before becoming a mother. This survey of nearly 200 students showed that eight in 10 studying medicine would freeze their eggs to postpone motherhood.

Younger, healthier eggs pose a higher chance of success, but many women currently freezing their eggs are in their late 30s and are doing it as a “last resort”. The process costs around £3,000 per cycle and some women may need to undergo as many as three cycles.

Dr Julie Nekkebroeck, speaking at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, who carried out the small Belgian study of 15 women, also found that 27% wanted their relationship to blossom before they broached the topic of children. The average age of the women was 38, and they did not expect to use their eggs until around age 43.

"We found that they had all had partners in the past, and one was currently in a relationship, but they had not fulfilled their desire to have a child because they thought that they had not found the right man," she said. ~ BBC News, Jun 28

Australian surgeon Jayant Patel has been sentenced to 7 years in jail after being found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and one count of grievous bodily harm.

The prosecution described Patel as a “bad surgeon motivated by ego and suffering from lack of insight”. He had been criminally negligent in his work. "Over 19 to 20 months there had been poor decision-making, misdiagnosis, performing surgery on patients who could not withstand it, performing surgery at the wrong hospital and the removal of healthy organs".

The defence maintained that Patel acted only in the best interests of his patients, who had consented to the operations.

The Patel case has been on the front page of Australian newspapers since 2005. The doctor was trained in India and moved to the US. He was censured for negligence and had his licence to practice restricted in both New York and Oregon. However, he managed to talk his way into becoming a surgeon at country town in Queensland where there was a shortage of doctors. There he bullied and bluffed his way through his work until a whistleblower finally convinced authorities to investigate his horrendous record. Patel then fled to the US and had to be extradited to face charges.

Patel will face a separate trial for eight counts of fraud and a second charge of grievous bodily harm. ~ ABC News, Jun 29, Jun 30

 

Nearly half of people with dementia are mistreated by their caregivers, according to recent American research.

The study, run by the University of California Irvine Program in Geriatrics and published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, surveyed 129 patients. The researchers found that 46% of participants with dementia   had been mistreated by their caregivers, with 42% experiencing psychological abuse, 10% physical abuse and 14% caregiver neglect.

Risk factors for one or more types of mistreatment for caregivers included higher anxiety, fewer social contacts, greater perceived burden, as well as more depressive symptoms. For patients they included more psychological aggression and any physical assault behaviours.

According to the study, the behaviour of people with dementia towards their caregiver is the best combination of factors for predicting which of the people with dementia had been mistreated. ~ Center of Excellence on Elder Abuse and Neglect, Jun 23

A woman who sought treatment from a prominent Connecticut fertility clinic received embryos belonging to a woman with the same last name. The blunder occurred in April 2009 at the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services at the University of Connecticut Health Center. It will pay a US$3,000 fine for the mix-up.

The lab technician apparently checked only the last name on the container of embryos and removed the wrong ones from frozen storage. The woman who received the embryos was informed of the error within an hour and used a “morning after pill” to terminate the pregnancy. The embryos belonged to a woman who had been out of treatment since 2006, but had continued to store them at the centre. She was also informed of the error.

The centre said that this incident was the first of its kind in its 24-year history. “Thousands of babies have been born via The Center’s efforts without issue - and more than three million babies have been born through IVF world wide - and mix ups remain exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, however uncommon they may be, each one is important and emotionally difficult for patients and centers alike.”

The centre has agreed to have a consultant review its laboratory policies and procedures. It will be required to provide new training for employees on policies and procedures on securing frozen embryos and verifying their ownership. ~ NBC Connecticut, Jun 28

Want to live forever? KrioRus, the first cryonics company outside the United States, has a solution for you. For US$10,000 it will freeze your brain ($30,000 for your whole body) and store them in its warehouse until scientists are able to “reboot” the brains and restore the frozen corpses to life. There is an annual $500 storage fee for keeping the body parts in liquid nitrogen.

Alcor, a US company which offers a similar service, has about 100 clients; KrioRus only 12, but there seems to be real interest. "I don't ever want to die... It wouldn't suit me," Innokenty Osadchy, a 35-year-old investment banker told AFP. "Why do I have to die in a couple decades? I don't see any logic in this… I don't ever want to die ever. Not in a year, not in a million years."

As in the US, two-thirds of the firms’ clients choose the brain-only option. "We know that the personality is stored in the brain. So when a person's body is old, there's no reason to keep it," said manager Danila Medvedev. "We tell our clients it's cheaper, safer and probably better preservation just to freeze the brain." ~ AFP, Jul 1

Chinese petitioners, troublemakers and corruption whistleblowers are being locked up in psychiatric institutions, according to the BMJ. Liu Feiyue, founder of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, says that he has documented more than 500 cases.

"When normal citizens are put into psychiatric hospitals the situation is very grave. They are often forced to take medicine or injections, and when they don’t cooperate they report being bound, beaten up, force fed and electrocuted," Liu says. "As social conflicts in China have intensified in recent years the number of petitioners has increased and so has the number of normal citizens being incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals."

Part of the problem is that sweeping economic changes in China have left psychiatric hospitals short of money. Incarcerating inconvenient people for a fee is one way to make ends meet. "Treatment is only available when there is someone willing to pay. If they have the money and the motive they can send someone to psychiatric hospital," says Huang Xuetao, a lawyer who handles involuntary psychiatric commitment.

In addition to hospitals run by the Ministry of Health, there are at least 23 others run by the Public Security Bureau. All of the staff, including doctors and nurses, are members of the police. Like the old Soviet psychiatric system on which it has been modelled, these institutions are used for locking away political dissidents.

The BMJ says that abuse of psychiatry has received very little attention in the world media, apart from complaints about Falun Gong members. However, the number of politically troublesome people locked away in asylums is likely to be greater than the persecuted Falun Gong sect. ~ BMJ, June 25

A decision on end-of-life treatment in Germany is sending confusing signals about the state of the law there. An appeals court has struck down the conviction of a lawyer, Wolfgang Putz, who had advised his client to cut a feeding tube which was keeping her elderly mother alive.

Erika Küllmer had been in a vegetative state for five years and was being poorly cared for. Apparently her gangrenous arm had to be amputated at one stage after it had been neglected by nursing home staff. Relations between the woman’s daughters and the nursing home staff had broken down completely.

Germany's highest criminal court has ruled that withdrawal of treatment is legal if the patient has explicitly expressed a wish to avoid burdensome treatment. "Turning off a ventilator or cutting a feeding tube fall under the category of permissible forms of terminating treatment," declared a judge in the Federal Court of Justice.

Because – on top of a language barrier -- most newspaper accounts have confused euthanasia, assisted suicide and refusal of burdensome treatment, it is difficult to determine the significance of the case. But an opinion piece in Die Zeit described it as ground-breaking. Although German courts have dealt with similar cases, this case clarifies that a “living will” need not be written. Her daughter said that Mrs K. had expressed a wish not to be kept alive in such circumstances and this verbal request was sufficient, the court decided.

This was criticised by Eugen Brysch, the director of the German Hospice Foundation. “The verdict transmits a fatal signal that does not comply with the critically sick people’s fundamental right to self-determination and care,” he said. Mr Brysch was particular critical of an unwritten living will. “If, as in this case, a casual private conversation without sufficient witnesses is enough to determine the patient’s wishes, then the floodgates for misuse are wide open.” ~ New York Times, June 26