Jacqueline Herremans
Paris, 6 July 2005

We, the 6th IHEU Congress, declare our support on ethical grounds for beneficent voluntary euthanasia. We believe that reflective ethical consciousness has developed to a point that makes it possible for societies to work out a humane policy toward death and dying. We deplore moral insensitivity and legal restrictions that impede and oppose consideration of the ethical case for euthanasia. We appeal to an enlightened public opinion to transcend traditional taboos and to move in the direction of a compassionate view toward needless suffering in dying.
--IHEU Congress 1974

Assisted dying has become a reality in Oregon, Switzerland (assisted suicide), the Netherlands and Belgium (euthanasia and assisted suicide): the only exceptions in the whole world. Last April, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was unable to accept a resolution on assistance for patients at the end of life. As surveys and polls around the world show, there is a gap between the growing feeling of the population, which is largely in favour of the right for a person to make her/his own choice at the end of life, and the will of the politicians to tackle this ethical question: and between several doctors who take risks to help their patients at the last minute of their lives and the attitudes of the professional medical associations.

Nevertheless, there are some reasons to be optimistic: in several countries, the debate is extensive and public. With a narrow majority, the British Medical Association decided in June 2005 to abandon its opposition towards assisted dying and to adopt a neutral position on assisted suicide. Improvement is coming slowly but certainly.

The participants of the workshop expressed a need for much information, especially regarding the experiences in the Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon and Switzerland - not to copy their solutions but to study how they succeeded in order to propose solutions in their own countries, according to their legal systems and cultures.