Physician Says Dutch Doctors Often Kill without Patients' Consent

                   Vol. IX, No. 6, June/July 1996

Recent court rulings have rekindled the debate over doctor-assisted suicide. The following is an excerpt from "Last Rights," an article which appeared in the March 23 issue of World magazine. This excerpt from that article focuses on euthanasia in Holland, the only country that officially condones the practice. The article was written by Roy Maynard.

Retired Dutch physician Richard Fenigsen wrote in the journal Issues in Law and Medicine last year that, in his home country, "the lives of many people are deliberately put to an end ... sometimes without his or her request, consent, or knowledge."

About 23 years ago Dutch prosecutors cut a deal with doctors: Follow a few simple rules, and you can assist your patients to commit suicide. The rules were virtually identical to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals' new edict: The patient must be terminally ill, have made repeated requests for assistance in suicide, and suffering must be unbearable.

But in practice, more than half of the time, Dutch doctors kill patients without the patients' knowledge or consent; they justify this by saying it is what they think is best. And it's not just the old and sick who die. Newborn babies with disabilities are being killed, as are children who are gravely ill, Dr. Fenigsen reports.

One baby with Down Syndrome was born with a blockage of the digestive tract. Instead of fixing the defect with simple surgery, the hospital and parents chose to do nothing, and let the child die.

A boy born in 1990 with spina bifida and hydrocephalus fell ill for a few days, and his parents and physician decided euthanasia would be best for this three-month-old. One of his nurses opposed the decision, and with her husband went to the parents and offered to adopt the infant, but the boy was killed by lethal injection anyway.

There are other disturbing cases. A 27-year-old ballet dancer who developed arthritis in her toes asked for, and received, help in committing suicide because she said her life was no longer worth living if she couldn't be a dancer.

Elderly Dutch citizens now are afraid for their lives in a land where such sentiments are rising, he notes. "As early as 1984 to 1987 there were scattered reports that some older people, afraid of involuntary euthanasia, refused to be admitted to nursing or senior citizens' homes, avoided visiting doctors' offices, and, when admitted to a hospital, refused to take medicines and even orange juice.

"Euthanasia is not just changing medicine," Dr. Fenigsen concludes. "It's replacing medicine."

[Reprinted from AFA Journal, June 1996.]