These criteria include that patients must be suffering 'hopelessly and unbearably' and must have made repeated informed and voluntary requests for their lives to be terminated. An independent doctor must give a second opinion after having examined the patient. Both doctors must send written details to reviews committees. The committees can still decide to send the case for prosecution if they feel the criteria have been breached. The Dutch government hopes that the proposed bill will help prevent underreporting of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Indian authorities try to clamp on antenatal sex selection and female feticide.
Although an act passed by the Indian government in 1994 bans antenatal sex determination and imposes fines and possible imprisonment on doctors who reveal the sex of the fetus to parents, the practice of prenatal sex determination and selective abortion of female fetuses is widespread in India. A study in several hospitals in Bombay revealed that in this city alone there were about 80,000 cases of female feticide over a 5-year period. The Indian Medical Association of India has asked doctors to stop these practices and threatened to advise the Indian Medical Council to revoke the licenses of doctors involved in such practices. Medical sequelae of Gulf war. The incidence of cancer and congenital defects has increased substantially in Iraq after the Gulf war.