Rome (NEV), February 5, 2017 – “Every adult and capable of discernment, in anticipation of his/her future incapacity of self-determination, may – through Anticipated dispositions of treatment (DAT) – express his/her convictions and preferences in health treatment matters, including artificial nutrition and hydration. It is as well possible to nominate a trustee to represent him/her in the relations with medical doctors and health structures”. Thus reads the 3rd article of the bill on ‘end of life will’ which on January 30th resumed its parliamentary process. Proposer Donata Lenzi (Democratic Party) presented a basic text which unified the 15 bills on living wills, unanimously adopted by the Commission for Social affairs of the Chamber of Deputies.
Luca Savarino, coordinator of the Bioethics Commission of the Waldensian Board, declared to NEV Agency, that with this law, Italy – in great delay on this topic – would finally fills a major legislative gap: “It is a simple and reasonable text, with no drifts on euthanasia”. For Savarino “this bill is convincing for three reasons: at last makes the DAT binding, except for medical motivated disagreement; it contemplates the patient’s faculty to stop nutrition and hydration, considered as therapeutic measures; it puts at its center the freedom of treatment and the patient’s informed consent”. Furthermore, Savarino underlined that all DAT previous to the approval of the law, are also becoming binding: for all those Italian Protestant churches that during these years have been collecting ‘end of life wills’ it is an important news.
