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• Surviving relatives are often neglected as stakeholders of organizations. • Several institutions demonstrated a lack of compassion with the surviving relatives. • Surviving relatives initiated a five year safety improvement program in the company. • The successful improvement program inspired many organizations and institutions. • The labour inspection adopted safety improvement plans as alternative to fines. • The potential of victims as 'change agents for safety' is generally underestimated. • Prevention of unnecessary suffering of victims should be part of safety science. Fatal accidents are a life changing event for surviving relatives. As secondary victims, their life is suddenly disrupted and becomes filled with mourning, sorrow, pain and uncertainty. A case study from the Netherlands shows that a range of organizations and institutions have a social responsibility to contribute to mitigating the suffering of surviving relatives. A responsibility which is up till now often neglected. From a corporate social responsibility point of view the alleviation and prevention of suffering of surviving relatives should be important for any organisation involved in the aftermath of fatal accidents. The case study shows that surviving relatives, as secondary victims, can contribute in a unique way to the initiation, implementation and realization of a successful corporate program to promote prevention and the development of a proactive safety culture. Finally, the case study shows that surviving relatives can contribute actively to the development of more proactive inspection strategies and new legislation. It is suggested that within safety science and practice more attention should be given to the agency and potential positive contributions of surviving relatives and survivors of serious accidents to prevention and safety promotion. By speaking from their heart and out of their dramatic personal experience, they can impact the behaviour of corporate leaders, policy makers as well as operational workers in a unique way. Simultaneously, such activities help them to develop new purpose and meaning in their disrupted lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia is most often seen to be the result of three changes in society: individualisation, diminished taboos concerning death and changes in the balance of power in medicine. The fact that these changes occurred in many western countries but led to legalisation in only a few makes this claim problematic. I examine whether socio-legal propositions, with respect to the emergence of laws which focus on social control, offer a better approach to understanding the development of rules allowing and governing euthanasia. After a short sketch of the history of the Dutch law regulating euthanasia, I discuss these three societal changes in the light of shifts in the social control of medical behaviour that shortens life. I show that the Dutch relaxation of the prohibition of euthanasia goes together with new forms of social control: doctors’ self control is complemented with second-party control (by patients), professional third-party control and governmental control. My work calls attention to the fact that bioethics is part of larger systems of social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]