Doctors face jail after ‘diagnosing woman with autism so she could get lethal injection’

NZ Herald 26 November 2018
Family First Comment: So much for ‘safeguards’. You can’t undo ‘killed’!
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Three doctors who certified a woman as autistic so that she could die by euthanasia are set to go on trial in Belgium.

The sisters of Tine Nys told investigators that her suffering was caused instead by a broken heart after a failed relationship, and that she had falsely claimed to be autistic to two doctors and a psychiatrist.

She had told them her suffering was “unbearable and incurable” so that she could qualify for euthanasia under Belgian law, the Daily Mail reports.

Nys was given a lethal injection in April 2010, just two months after her diagnosis of autism, and died aged 38. Her sisters and her parents were at her bedside.

Campaigners in the UK say the case highlights the dangers of introducing euthanasia here.

Nys’s family claims that the law was broken because she was never treated for autism and so it had not been established that she was suffering unbearably and incurably – the key criteria for a mercy killing to go ahead.

The three doctors have been charged with failing to comply with the legal conditions for euthanasia and poisoning. If found guilty they are almost certain to face jail.
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