The “Bioethics” Work Group of the Conference of Swiss Bishops “welcome with enthusiasm the principal objective” of the Directives on medical ethics of the Academy of Medical Sciences (ASSM) concerning the “care for terminal patients”, but “energetically oppose the moral support” that the ASSM “would like to give to assisted suicide”. The position of the Swiss Bishops is contained in a statement signed by Msgr. Kurt Koch, bishop of Basel and head of the “Doctrine/bioethics” department of the Swiss Episcopal Conference, and Urs Kayser, chairman of the above-cited Work Group, issued yesterday. So the bishops welcome the objective of the ASSM to “help alleviate the sufferings [of terminal patients] and offer them the best possible conditions through palliative treatments”, but reject assisted suicide. “Whatever the limitations imposed” and the “legal regulations” says the statement assistance in suicide ought never to receive moral support” because it “suppresses the life of a person”. “To justify such an act say the bishops would open the door to serious consequences”. “Physicians must refuse to provide assistance to the suicide of a terminal patient”: this is the “key formulation” that the bishops propose to insert in the “Directives”, pointing out that “no right to suicide exists” and “consequently, no right to assistance in such an act”. As regards this latter point, the bishops point out, “the Swiss Penal Code presents a gap that needs to be filled”; it is therefore essential “that article 115 be amended and made more precise in this regard”. To this end, the bishops hope that “the ‘Directives’, to which the political authorities refer, would clearly renounce any justification of assisted suicide”.
