Supporters of the legalisation of voluntary, assisted and state euthanasia are likely to renew their efforts to introduce legislation in the next Parliament. But the general public – and other MPs – should look to the Netherlands as a warning on where such legislation can take a country.
The winds of change have swept through the Netherlands – By Andrew Halloway
Supporters of the legalisation of voluntary, assisted and state euthanasia are likely to renew their efforts to introduce legislation in the next Parliament. But the general public – and other MPs – should look to the Netherlands as a warning on where such legislation can take a country.
The majority of the Dutch now support euthanasia – a sweeping change for a nation where doctors of the previous generation heroically refused Nazi orders to kill patients.
In Holland, euthanasia has, to all intents and purposes, become a tool of health care rationing. According to www.current.com, “over 50% of Dutch physicians admitted to practising euthanasia, most often on cancer patients. Only 60% kept written records of their euthanasia practice and only 29% filled out death certificates honestly in euthanasia cases… Only half of Dutch doctors report euthanasia.”
In 2001, a study of 5,500 deaths found that 41% to 54% were of patients that had been euthanised.
In the Netherlands, such statistics are defended by those who say that the suffering of these patients was ended of their own free will. But apparently that is not always the case.
Because euthanasia now has strong public support, running at about 80%, doctors have killed some adult patients who did not request their deaths. Researcher Richard Minister (in ‘The Dutch way of Death’, 2001) says that, even way back in 1990, the government’s own records show that, of 130,000 Dutch deaths, 11,800 were “killed or helped to die” by doctors, and an estimated 5,981 of these were killed without their consent.
In addition, there are the deaths of disabled infants, terminally ill children and mental patients. Around 8% of all Dutch infant deaths are caused by doctors, a figure confirmed in a 1997 edition of the leading British medical journal, the Lancet.
When Groningen University Hospital announced their decision to euthanise children under 12 when their pain is “intolerable, or if they have an incurable illness”, the Catholic Association of Doctors and Nurses gave this response:
“The decision proposes a death solution in situations which could be addressed by modern palliative care… [and it] raises the suspicion of a financial interest of the public authorities, since it decreases the ‘burden’ of prolonged and expensive care in clinical conditions for which any extension of life duration is considered meaningless… it opens the door on a national scale to the ‘mercy killing’ of other mentally incompetent persons, to be eliminated without their consent for reasons based on an external appreciation of their quality of life.”
It is also claimed that 31 per cent of Dutch paediatricians have killed infants – a fifth of which were done without the consent of parents.
In ‘Now They Want to Euthanise Children’ author Wesley J. Smith says: “In 30 years Holland has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia of people who are terminally ill to euthanasia of those who are chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for mental illness, from euthanasia for mental illness to euthanasia for psychological distress or mental suffering, and from voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia or as the Dutch prefer to call it ‘termination of the patient without explicit request’.”
In fact, opinion has swung so far that denying someone an assisted death is actually seen as discrimination against the chronically ill! Smith continues: “The next step, non-voluntary euthanasia, is then justified by appealing to our social duty to care for patients who are not competent to choose for themselves.”
When killing is interpreted as ‘care’, we have a complete reversal of normal morality.
Remarkably, the original Hippocratic oath, written as long ago as the 4th century BC, contained higher morals than most Western societies espouse today. The Dutch should be shamed by it. Despite being formulated in a pre-Christian society, it nevertheless contained many prohibitions that pro-lifers of today would be proud of:
“I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy… In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.”
How sad that this oath, particularly because of such politically incorrect values, is no longer a requirement for modern doctors. So much for progress!
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Tags: Law, Science & Medical