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Michael Cook

Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. He also writes a bioethics column for Australasian Science and contributes occasional op-ed pieces to newspapers and websites in the US, UK and Australia.

Big rise in Dutch euthanasia deaths
Michael Cook | 8 Oct 2012
Just-released statistics for Dutch euthanasia in 2011 show that the number of psychiatric patients who died has skyrocketed from 2 in 2010 to 13 last year. Euthanasia for people with dementia also rose substantially, to 49.

Swiss parliament rejects more regulation of assisted suicide
Michael Cook | 28 Sep 2012
The lower house of the Swiss parliament has declined to tighten controls on assisted suicide. MPs felt that self-regulation by groups like Exit and Dignitas was enough.

New first for Belgium: prisoner euthanasia
Michael Cook | 16 Sep 2012
No doubt about it: Belgium is the place to be for creative applications of legalised euthanasia. Last year Belgian transplant surgeons revealed that they had harvested organs from four people who were voluntarily euthanased. Now it appears that one prisoner, a rapist-murderer, has already died after voluntary euthanasia and another has requested it.

Euthanasia denied to two paralyzed British men
Michael Cook | 18 Aug 2012
Two severely paralyzed British men have lost a High Court case to allow doctors to end their lives without fear of prosecution.

Prosecute police, says Dignitas. They stopped our suicide
Michael Cook | 17 Aug 2012
The Swiss group Dignitas has filed a complaint against the Zurich prosecutor’s office for interrupting an assisted suicide. On August 2, a 67-year-old woman suffering from a genetic disease who weighed only 35 kilos attempted to kill herself at a Dignitas clinic.

American sailor jailed over assisted suicide
Michael Cook | 15 Aug 2012
Google "assisted suicide" on Google News and you can scroll through a number of current cases which have been discribed as "assisted suicide" or "mercy killing". As a particularly sordid example of how assisted suicide can be abused, consider the case of Gerard Curran and Paul Stephen Bricker, two American sailors living in Virginia.

German government wrangling over assisted suicide
Michael Cook | 15 Aug 2012
A close friend should be allowed to help someone commit suicide, says the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

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