August 23, 2010: The Bio-ethics Institute of Ghent University organizes an international symposium on "Continuous Sedation at the end of life: Ethical Perspectives" on March 11-12, 2011 in the Marriott Hotel, Ghent, Belgium.

/ / July 19, 2010: In June an Australian paper (www.theage.com) reported about the findings of a Belgian survey on the role of nurses in physician assisted deaths in Belgium. By using the wrong words they suggested a huge misbehaviour of Belgian doctors and nurses: 50% of all euthanasia-cases were non-voluntary, and 20% of all nurses had been involved in non-voluntary euthanasia cases.

March 16, 2010: Belgium scientists (Smets e.a.) published a brief report in Medical Care in which they give the characteristics of all the reported cases of euthanasia in Belgium, since the implementation of the law in 2002. The objective was to study the reported medical practice of euthanasia and present an analysis of the anonymous database of all euthanasia cases reported to the Federal Control and Evaluation Committee Euthanasia.

  February 18, 2010:   In accordance with the Belgian Euthanasia Law a 16 person Federal Euthanasia Review Committee assesses every case of Termination of life on request (that is reported!), and reports every two years to the Belgian Parliament. Recently the numbers of reported cases in 2008 and 2009 were already published, in advance of the official report expected this year.

  February 15, 2010:  A research team of the VUB (Brussels Free University), headed by professor Lieve de Bock, explored the relation between the care provided in the final three months of life and the prevalence and types of end of life decisions in Belgium. It concerned a two year nationwide retrospective study.

/  January 31, 2010 Two researchgroups from Belgium and the Netherlands (the End-of-life Care Research Group from VU Brussels and the EMGO VUmc Amsterdam group) published a theoretical study into the practice of End-of-Life Consultation Services, developped in both countries: Establishing specialized health services for professional consultation in euthanasia: experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium.

September 28, 2009: Pour des lecteurs francophones, voici une traduction francaise de la conférence de Dr Rodney Syme, conférencier-invité principal à la Faculté de Droit de l'Université de

September 10, 2009: The New England Journal of Medicine today (NEJM 361;11,

A criminal case was launched on 8 July 2000 after the suicide of Jean-Marie Lorand, who was accompanied by his doctor. On 6 June 2005 the Appeal Court of Mons finally dismissed the case.

A GP from Ostend was arrested on 29 July and imprisoned for four days, accused of having ended the lives of 5 patients in a care home over the last 3 years by increasing their doses of morphine. The management of the home brought the case. The case remain粑