Apr 10, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Since the death of 41-year-old Florida woman Terri Schiavo March 31, debates on the ethics of euthanasia have come to the foreground in Austria and Germany, says a recent report by the Associated Press.
In countries still struggling with the horrors of Hitler’s Nazi regime, where 75,000 people with disabilities or otherwise deemed unfit were used for brutal medical experiments and killed, the Schiavo case made news headlines for days. Survivors of these Nazi experiments say no one has the right to play God.
Neither country is considering euthanasia laws, but both are debating living wills.
Germany’s Social Democrats want to strengthen the rights of patients with living wills. But a parliamentary commission wants to limit them and allow families and doctors to overrule them in some cases.