The trouble with the Netherlands’ elective euthanasia so much admired by
Pete Herridge (Letters, April 11), is that now it’s also non-elective.
A report commissioned by the Dutch Government reveals that the Netherlands have
moved from assisted suicide to euthanasing patients who ‘need’ it but are judged
incompetent to decide that for themselves.
The Dutch call it ‘termination of the patient without explicit request’.
Chillingly, the Remmelink report says of 130,000 deaths in the Netherlands, 1000
were admitted by doctors to have been caused or hastened without their patients’
request. Eighty per cent of physicians who gave treatment that might
have hastened or caused death gave as their reason their patient’s impaired
ability to communicate. Thirteen per cent of physicians failed to tell even
competent patients that they were actually administering lethal treatment
because, they said, the subject had been discussed previously.
And now more than half of Dutch physicians are happy to suggest euthanasia
to their patients. In other words, forget palliative care (the Netherlands
don’t do that any more) because your life’s not worth living.
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