After "the announcement of a diagnosis that they had a degenerative eye disease, a glaucoma with progressive loss of sight that could lead to blindness", it appeared “literally unbearable" to twins aged 45 "to no longer be able to see each other and to lose all their independence." After the announcement of this diagnosis they "made a ‘death pact’ […] as is allowed by the law on euthanasia in force since 2002," and doctors in Brussels "accepted their request to let them die on 14 December despite the fact that neither of them was suffering from a disease in its terminal phase."