Home

Swiss prosecutors have dropped a criminal probe of the founder of the assisted suicide group Dignitas over urns containing human ashes that were thrown into Lake Zurich. The Zurich prosecutors' office says an extensive investigation was unable to determine who tossed the urns into the ...

The Marshall Islands region of Ebeye, which has the unflattering reputation as the "slum of the Pacific" has now been damned in a US Army report as a health threat to residents. The collapsing infrastructure, including a sewerage system that has not worked for five years, cannot support the population according to the report prepared for the commander of the ...

Britain leads the world in the quality of care it provides for the dying, leaving many developed nations lagging a long way behind, according to a study released Wednesday. State support for end-of-life care and an effective network of hospices put Britain top of the list of 40 countries, despite not having the best healthcare system overall, said a report ...

Asian countries are failing to provide adequate care for the dying despite rising standards of living across the region, according to a study released Wednesday. As the global population ages, the demand for end-of-life care is expected to surge, and governments and other providers are racing against time to meet these needs, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU ...

South Korean doctors will be allowed to remove life support from terminally ill patients after confirming their wish to die, under new medical guidelines on mercy killing, officials said Wednesday. The guidelines were drawn up by a committee of 18 representatives from parliament, civic groups and the judicial, religious and medical communities, the health ministry said. They agreed that doctors ...

Asian countries are failing to provide adequate care for the dying despite rising standards of living across the region, a study released Wednesday said. As the global population ages, the demand for end-of-life care is expected to surge, and governments and other providers are racing against time to meet these needs, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said ...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - At UCLA Medical Center, which prides itself on caring for critically ill patients, a recent study showed room for improvement in the way doctors manage dying patients -- and the findings likely apply to other hospitals as well, the researchers say. While doctors excelled at pain control, they did less well at talking to patients and families ...

In a story June 25 about a right-to-die case, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Germany's top criminal court legalized assisted suicide. The court didn't rule on the issue of assisted suicide. The case involved a woman in a vegetative coma who was being kept alive through an intravenous feeding tube, though not terminally ill. The court overturned ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jack Kevorkian earned the moniker "Dr. Death" by helping more than 130 terminally ill patients commit suicide, but even the right-to-die activist admits that he is afraid of the inevitable -- death. Kevorkian, 82, is the topic of a new HBO documentary "Kevorkian" which reviews a colorful career that included an eight-and-a-half year prison term for second-degree murder ...

A Portland psychiatrist who plans to open a home for terminally ill patients seeking to kill themselves has had his license suspended by medical regulators. The Oregon Medical Board took the action Thursday against Dr. Stuart Weisberg for an investigation of improperly prescribing drugs. Weisberg said he had not been informed of the board's action and was continuing to ...