Assisted suicide, the first historical yes to an Italian patient: "No one can condemn me to a life of torture"

Turned around for the battle over assisted suicide.

The ethics committee of the ASL of the Marche (Asur) has given the first historic green light to an Italian patient: it is Mario (invented name), a quadriplegic immobilized in bed for 11 years following a road accident. For the committee he has the requisites for legal access to assisted suicide.

The green light came after two legal warnings to Asur and the help offered by the Luca Coscioni association. Mario thus becomes the first patient in Italy to obtain the green light for medically assisted suicide, after the “Cappato-Dj Fabo” sentence issued by the Constitutional Court.

"I feel lighter, I have emptied myself of all the tension accumulated over the years - his comment -. I am tired and I want to be free to choose my end of life. Nobody can tell me that I am not too bad to continue living in these conditions ", and" condemning me to a life of torture. Put aside ideologies, hypocrisy, indifference, everyone take their own responsibilities because they are playing on the pain of the sick ".

THE STORY - The 43-year-old had asked the local hospital for over a year to check his health conditions in order to legally access a lethal drug in Italy to put an end to his suffering in application of the sentence of the Constitutional Court n . 242/2019 which indicates the non-punishable conditions of assisted suicide aid.

After the No of Asur, a first and a second final decision by the Court of Ancona, two legal warnings to Asur Marche, he finally obtained the opinion of the Ethics Committee, which following verification of his conditions through a group of medical specialists appointed by Asur Marche, confirmed that he meets the requirements for legal access to assisted suicide.

THE COSCIONI ASSOCIATION - Mario's is an "ordeal due to the institutional blame game", said Marco Cappato, Treasurer of the Luca Coscioni Association. "After the sentence of the Constitutional Court which has in effect legalized assisted suicide, no patient has so far been able to benefit from it, as the National Health Service hides behind the absence of a law that defines the procedures - says Cappato -. Mario however, it is moving forward thanks to the courts, thus making clear the blame game in progress. After having moved the local health authority that refused to start the process, now it was the turn of the Ethics Committee. The definition of the administration process is now missing. of the euthanasia drug ".

This "tortuous path is also due to the paralysis of the Parliament, which still three years after the request of the Constitutional Court is unable to vote even a law defining the procedures for applying the Court's sentence. The result of this institutional blameworthiness - he notes - is that people like Mario are forced to endure even a judicial ordeal, in addition to the physical and psychological one caused by their condition ". "It is possible that the decision of the Ethics Committee will soon allow Mario to obtain what he has been asking for for 14 months. But it is certain that in order to have clear rules that go beyond the issue of assisting suicide and regulate euthanasia in a broader sense - Cappato concludes - the intervention of the Italian people will be necessary, with the referendum that partially decriminalizes the crime of murder of the consenting person ".

(Unioneonline / D)