In April, the Supreme Court ruled that it was no longer necessary to reconfirm with a dementia patient their earlier written request to die.
The ruling means doctors can no longer be prosecuted for carrying out euthanasia on dementia patients.
The devastating move came after a Dutch doctor was taken to court for carrying out an assisted suicide on a patient with Alzheimer’s. Although having a written directive asking for euthanasia in the event that she was admitted to a nursing home due to dementia, she indicated she wanted to determine when ‘the time was right’.
On several occasions in the nursing home she said she didn’t want to die. The family and a doctor decided that she should receive an assisted suicide because of her prior statement.
The doctor slipped a sedative into the woman’s coffee to relax her before administering the lethal injection. But during the assisted suicide, the patient awoke and resisted the doctor. The physician asked the family for help in holding down the patient while he finished the procedure.
