In March last year, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig ruled that seriously ill people in Germany who are willing to die can receive a lethal dose of narcotics (sodium pentobarbital) for suicide. According to the guidelines of the ruling, although the acquisition of a narcotic for the purpose of suicide is generally not permitted, the general right of personality “also includes the right of a seriously and terminally ill person to decide how and at what point in time their life should end, provided that they can freely form their will and act accordingly”. With regard to this fundamental right, the acquisition of a narcotic for a suicide is “exceptionally compatible with the purpose of the Narcotics Act […] if the suicidal purchaser is in an extreme emergency situation due to a serious and incurable illness”.
Now the Ministry of Health under Jens Spahn (CDU) has called on the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) not to allow the purchase of drugs for suicide in seriously ill patients , even in extreme cases. This emerges from a letter dated June 29, 2018, which was made available to several media outlets. According to the letter, it cannot be the task of the state to “actively support acts of suicide through the official, administrative granting of permits to purchase the specific means of suicide” – corresponding applications should be rejected.
Gita Neumann, member of the executive committee of the Humanist Association Germany responsible for humane dying, says: “The Ministry of Health wants to deny seriously ill, terminally ill people the last chance for a legal and humane means of suicide. Access had been expressly granted by Germany’s highest administrative court in extreme cases of unbearable suffering. There are no ideologically neutral reasons for the scandalous disregard of the Federal Administrative Court’s ruling. Even the promotion of assisted suicide in accordance with Section 217 of the German Criminal Code is based on the rigorous tendency not to make any exceptions for doctors, for example, who even provide their hopelessly ill patients with assistance in taking their own lives.”
Bild: Die HoffotografenSince the ruling in March 2017, more than one hundred applications for the release of sodium pentobarbital have already been submitted to the BfArM – but all of these applications are still pending (as of 26.04.2018). This is evident from the answer to a minor question to the Bundestag. For the applicants, the letter from the Ministry of Health now at least means clarity: as a subordinate authority, the BfArM must adhere to the requirements of the Federal Ministry.
The fact is that the majority of Germans are in favor of a “right to assisted suicide” in Germany in the event of a serious, incurable illness. This means that political action here is not only at odds with the ruling of the Federal Administrative Court, but also with the will of the majority of the population.
“We are calling on the federal government to harmonize blatant contradictions in the interests of the majority of the population,” says Gita Neumann. “To this end, Section 217 of the Criminal Code urgently needs to be reviewed instead of calling on a federal institute to break the law against a supreme court ruling.”
