"Couples Euthanasia"?

Yesterday I published a post on assisted dying "tourism" in Switzerland. Following up that story is another story on a related topic. Reported in the Daily Mail Online, Elderly couple to die together by assisted suicide even though they are not ill focuses on a Brussels couple in their late 80s who, despite not being terminally ill, plan to die together because they "fear loneliness if the other one dies first from natural causes" and the couple's 3 adult children have said they would be unable to care for the surviving parent when the first one died. The kids have found a doctor to help on the basis of the parents' "mental  anguish constituted the unbearable suffering needed to legally justify euthanasia."

The couple has selected the date and the method of euthanasia.  Although double euthanasia may seem novel, theirs will not be the first time this has occurred.   However, their request has created something of a stir in the UK, according to the story.  The story notes that in Brussels, evidently mental anguish is becoming a more accepted basis for a euthanasia request.

Thanks to Sushil Preet Cheema, one of my elder law concentration students, for sending me the link to this story.