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Human rights and bioethics updates

A blog dedicated to updating you upon legislation and ethical debates around human rights (principally under the angle of law-enforcement forces) and bioethics (under the angle of the protection of vulnerable persons). You are welcome to leave your comments on any of the posts!

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Euthanasia in discussion in the United Kingdom

Just before the summer came in, a bill has been in hot discussion in the British House of the Lords. Called "assisted dying bill", this text purports to introduce euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United Kingdom. Deposed by a private member, Lord Joffe, who is also a member of the voluntary euthanasia society, this bill purports to introduce an exception

An interesting interview on the subject of euthanasia and other ethical questions was given to the web site www.totalcatholic.com by Jim Dobbin, a British MP. You can read the interview here. He speaks about old people in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is legalized, leaving the country when they to get on long term care, "because they can see what is happening".

According to Dobbin, the bill was already introduced in a wider version earlier, last year, since the government and the opposition are against the bill. Now, it is worth introducing the words of a supporter of Lord Joffe to the question: according to this lady, Baroness Warnock said that "In other contexts sacrificing oneself for one's family would be considered good. I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance." She also said: "I am not ashamed to say some lives are more worth living than others." (Source: the web site euthanasia.com).

At least, the proponents of euthanasia in the UK are being blunt and straightforward. They are, in fact, saying loud what others think when they are proposing ever-extending bills to further euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands.

This being said, it is worth reading both the report of the House of the Lords on the bill and the bill itself. Since this is a web site dedicated to information on bioethical subjects here is the text of the bill (click on the link in "here"). The report of the House of the Lords is also available here .

I've also posted on my web site, a copy of the article of The Lancet on the euthanasia of newborns in Belgium, that appeared in April 2005. Most of you may have read excerpts from that article, but here is whole article which you can read for yourself. Click on this link: Lancet

Thursday, August 04, 2005

The death of Jean-Charles de Menezes poses some questions on the procedures and the intervention of the British police.

In fact, most of the photos of British plainclothes policemen show armed men, with guns and nothing (armband or such elements) identifying them as members of the police. I am not very much informed of the procedures of arrest of British police, but it seems strange that the British armed police is not obliged to carry a sign of identification when acting in intervention. That was the case on photographs of police near to Stockwell station, and that was again the case when special units of the police gave assault on the house of the 21 July attacks suspects. Those policemen did not wear any identification...

To give the reader an example of what the importance of identification might mean, in France, French case law has judged rebellion of a citizen to be legitimate against policemen who did not identify themselves as such when proceeding to an arrest. In fact, if the police has no identification, and whatever might be the circumstances, a citizen is entitled to believe that he is being attacked, and hence to use legitimate defence, despite his legal obligation not to oppose resistance to the police.

Whatever the circumstances, police may, of course, follow an individual, track him down and put pressure upon him; but they may never go on to arrest an individual without first identifying themselves as members of the police, and without making that apparent. The problem is how to identify the police: generally, when an arrest is engaged, “one hand holds the gun, the other the id” to put it apocryphally. An id should always be presented by the police, or the risk is present that the suspect may interpret the police intervention as a pure aggression. In France, generally, police use orange armbands on which it is marked “police”. The use of the armband has many advantages: it is easy to put on and to take out, it is visible, and it provides also a means of avoiding “friendly fire” in the heat of the action.

It may safely be assumed that no such band was worn by the policemen who sought to arrest de Menezes. The inquest – but here again, most of the information will be furnished by the policemen themselves – should establish whether the policemen identified themselves as such before jumping on de Menezes. At any rate, shooting eight bullets on a man is rather an indication of panic if anything, than a cold application of the “shoot to kill” policy. Any marksman knows that a “double-top” (two bullets shot in rapid succession in the head) is sufficient to kill an individual and to ensure his neutralisation.