Case involving end-of-life decision issues in Italy

Excerpt

On 22 September 2006 a severely ill Italian man, Piergiorgio Welby, made a plea to his country's president to be allowed to die. Mr. Welby, aged 60, had been paralyzed by muscular dystrophy for more than 40 years and mechanically ventilated for almost 10 years. In recent months his condition had taken a turn for the worse. Speaking via a computer that interpreted his eye movements, Welby appeared on television news and wrote to the president asking for “peace for my tortured and shattered body.” On 14 November 2006 in another letter to the presidents of the Parliamentary Commissions of Health and Law at the Senate and the Chamber he requested that mechanical ventilation be discontinued. On 28 November 2006 his attending physician refused to abruptly terminate life-sustaining ventilation. On 16 December 2006 a court in Rome rejected Welby's request to have physicians switch off his life-support machine arguing that his right to have the respirator disconnected was not concretely safeguarded by law—Mr. Welby had the constitutional right to have his life-support machine switched off, but physicians would be obliged to resuscitate him. This severely ill patient suffering from muscular dystrophy for decades lost the legal battle for his right to be allowed to die. On 23 December 2006 an anesthetist from the Hospital of Cremona administered an intravenous cocktail of sedatives and disconnected the respirator keeping the 60-year-old man alive. Around midnight, about 40 min from the time of sedative administration, Welby was pronounced dead. …