EU law: Belgium has significant hike in euthanasia after law

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Belgium has significant hike in euthanasia after law was passed in 2002

Doctors in Belgium have ended the lives of substantially more terminally ill people since a euthanasia law was passed in 2002, researchers said on Wednesday.

However, while the increase might have been expected, the number of patients dying that way remains small -- in part because of the use of more pain relieving drugs has been encouraged under a separate law also passed that year.

Of the 3,623 deaths included in the survey covering 2007, only 1.9 percent -- about 70 -- involved actively killing a patient, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. In 1998, the euthanasia rate was 1.1 percent.

"There are now more patients who can make their own request to end life, compared to 1998, because the physician and patient were not allowed to talk about ending life," Johan Bilsen of Vrije University Brussel, who led the study, said.

"It's almost doubled since 1998 and it's almost six times more than in 2001, so it is substantially increased."

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