On slippery slopes generally, see Shauer, F., “Slippery Slopes,” Harvard Law Review 99 (1985): 361–82; van der Burg, W., “The Slippery-Slope Argument,” Ethics 102 (1991): 42–65, at 42–3 (noting that the slippery slope argument has been invoked against the legalization of abortion, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, and DNA research); Freedman, B., “The Slippery-Slope Argument Reconstructed: Response to van der Burg,” Journal of Clinical Ethics 3 (1992): 293–7. See also, Williams, B., “Which Slopes Are Slippery?” in Lockwood, M., ed., Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985): 126–37, at 126–7 (pointing out that slippery slope arguments are often applied to matters of medical practice); Walton, D., Slippery Slope Arguments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Mayo, D. J., “The Role of Slippery Slope Arguments in Public Policy Debates,” Philosophical Exchange 21–22 (1990–91): 81–97; Whitman, J. P., “The Many Guises of the Slippery Slope Argument,” Social Theory & Practice 20 (1994): 85–97; Lode, E., “Slippery Slope Arguments and Legal Reasoning,” California Law Review 87 (1999): 1469–1544.Google Scholar

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See Lewis, , id. at 150–3. Belgium has explicitly legalized only euthanasia, although assisted suicide may be folded into the regulatory regime. See id., at 153–7.Google Scholar

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See supra note 25. The evidence is that the cases in this category are “quite heterogeneous” including severely handicapped neonates, coma patients and terminal cancer patients. In over half of the cases, there is evidence of some earlier discussion with the patient regarding euthanasia or a previously expressed wish. Pijnenborg, L. et al., “Life Terminating Acts without Explicit Request of the Patient,” Lancet 341 (1993): 1196–9, at 1197; Griffiths, , Bood, , Weyers, supra note 19, at 226–7. This may account for the conclusion reached by Margaret Otlowski that “there is some basis for suggesting that the incidence of active termination of life without the patient's request reported in the Remmelink survey may be disproportionately high.” Otlowski, M., Voluntary Euthanasia and the Common Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): at 438. The category represents non-voluntary rather than involuntary euthanasia. “In all situations in which there had been no discussion with the patient and in which no wish of the patient was known, the patients were incompetent.” van Delden, J. J. M. et al., “The Remmelink Study: 2 Years Later,” Hastings Center Report 23, no. 6 (1993): 24–7, at 25. Significantly, “most of these cases resemble death due to administration of pain relief more than they do euthanasia.” Griffiths, , Bood, , Weyers, , id., at 228 (“In 65% of the cases only morphine or the like was used, and in only 8% were muscle relaxants used, whereas in the case of euthanasia muscle relaxants are now used 90% of the time.”) See also, van Delden, , id., at 25. A further indication that at least some of these cases would be better classified as due to the administration of pain relief is that “[a]lmost all [of them] involve patients with only a few hours or days to live.” Pijnenborg, , id., at 1198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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See Mitchell, K. and Owens, R. G., “National Survey of Medical Decisions at End of Life Made by New Zealand General Practitioners,” British Medical Journal 327 (2003): 202–3. (5.6% of respondent doctors making an end-of-life decision at the last death attended had performed active euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide; 44% of these decisions had not been discussed with the patient, almost entirely because the patient was no longer competent.) A direct comparison between this study and the most recent U.K. study is found in Seale, supra note 58, at Table 4: The rate of active euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide at the last death attended across all respondents (not simply those who made an end-of-life decision) was 3.1% in the New Zealand study (95% CI 2.1%-4.1%) and 1.4% in the U.K. study (95% CI 0.3%-2.5%).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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See Seale, supra note 58, at Table 2; Ward, B. J. and Tate, P. A., “Attitudes among NHS Doctors to Requests for Euthanasia,” British Medical Journal 308 (1994): 1332–4 (12% of responding doctors had taken active steps to hasten death on request); McLean, S. A. M. and Britton, A., Sometimes a Small Victory (Glasgow: Institute of Law and Ethics in Medicine, 1996): at App. III, Table 17, 31–2, discussed in Keown, supra note 34, at 61 and Freeman, M., “Denying Death its Dominion: Thoughts on the Dianne Pretty Case,” Medical Law Review 10 (2002): 245–70, at 249, note 31 (4% of responding Scottish health professionals had assisted suicide). The House of Lords Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill doubted some of the U.K. survey evidence: “Bearing in mind however the trend towards death taking place in hospital rather than at home, the increasing prevalence of team-working in clinical care, the greater tendency for people to litigate where they suspect malpractice, and the potential for confusion with the legal administration of drugs to prevent restlessness and anxiety in the last hours of life, we would be surprised if covert euthanasia were being practised on anything like the scale which some of these surveys suggest.” House of Lords Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Report, HL Paper 86-I (2005): at 239, available at <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldse-lect/ldasdy/86/86i.pdf> (last visited December 13, 2006).Google Scholar

This data is from van der Heide, supra note 59, at Table 2; Seale, supra note 58, at Tables 2 and 3; Kuhse, supra note 55, at Box 4.Google Scholar

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Some of the criticism was canvassed by the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee in its report on the Bill to overrule the Northern Territory legislation. Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 (1997): at 88–9 (on the Northern Territory legislation, see Lewis, supra note 8, at 157–8). See also, Amarasekara, K., “Euthanasia and the Quality of Legislative Safeguards,” Monash University Law Review 23 (1997): 1–42, at 15–16; Amarasekara, , Bagaric, supra note 6, at 191; Gorsuch, supra note 38, at 1396–1400.Google Scholar

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The U.K. rate of non-treatment decisions as a percentage of non-sudden deaths was 33.4% (95% CI 27.1%-39.8%). Several European jurisdictions have significantly lower rates. For example, the rate in Belgium (pre-legalization) was 22.8% (95% CI 20.9%-24.7%). Denmark and Sweden had similar rates to Belgium. Italy's rate was much lower, at 5.6% (95% CI 4.6%-6.6%). The Netherlands and Switzerland had rates comparable to the U.K. Seale, supra note 58, at Table 3, using data from van der Heide, supra note 59, at Table 2.Google Scholar

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See Griffiths, supra note 33, at 203. For evidence of this use of pain relieving drugs, see Douglas, supra note 62 (36.2% of respondents reported giving pain-relieving drugs with the intention of hastening death); Seale, supra note 58, at Table 4 (comparing U.K. and New Zealand rates of cases where the intention of intensifying alleviation of pain or symptoms was partly to end life among responding general practitioners: The U.K. rate was 4.0% (95% CI 2.1%-5.9%); the New Zealand rate was 13.7% (95% CI 11.8%-15.6%, calculated using data from Mitchell, and Owens, supra note 63); Deliens, supra note 42, at Table 1. Among end-of-life decisions, the rate of alleviation of pain and symptoms with opioids in doses with a potential life-shortening effect and an additional intention to shorten the patient's life was 5.3% (95% CI 4.6%-6.0%); Kuhse, supra note 55, at Box 4. 6.5% of all Australian deaths were preceded by the alleviation of pain and suffering through the administration of opioids in sufficient doses to hasten death where the decision was partly intended to hasten death (no CI provided).Google Scholar

See Seale, , id. at Table 3; van der Heide, supra note 59, at Table 2. In fact, the reverse may be true. See the data on Italy and Sweden in Onwuteaka-Philipsen, supra note 73, at Table 3.Google Scholar

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