By BRIAN CLOWES
Part 2
As we have seen, the euthanasia program in the Netherlands began in earnest in the 1970s with a strong propaganda campaign that supported physician-assisted suicide of those people who were near the end of their lives, and who suffered only the most extreme and intractable pain. But, as with all evil, euthanasia began with an “infinitely small, wedged-in lever,” and then spread rapidly and with almost no opposition.
On February 9, 1993, after 15 years of pro-euthanasia agitation and lawbreaking, the Dutch Parliament finally caved in. It could no longer endure the divergence between actual practice and the law, and legalized what was “happening anyway.”
Apparently unaware of the ghastly irony of its actions, the Parliament codified the Royal Dutch Medical Association’s euthanasia guidelines as an appendix to the Disposal of the Dead Act. Naturally, the Parliament once again naively tried its best to craft a law that would allow euthanasia only under the most extreme of circumstances.
This effort, of course, was in vain. A 1997 survey by the Dutch government concluded that “virtually every guideline has failed to protect patients or has been modified or violated.”
Among the report’s findings:
Sixty percent of physicians ignored the requirement to report euthanasia and assisted suicide cases;
More than half of physicians reported that they often suggested euthanasia to patients who had not asked for it; and
Nearly half of all doctor-assisted deaths were non-voluntary or involuntary.
A study published in the February 16, 1999 Journal of Medical Ethics found that most cases of euthanasia in the Netherlands were not following the regulations laid down in the aftermath of legalization. The survey of 405 Dutch doctors showed that many were ignoring even the trivial safeguards established by the Royal Dutch Medical Association.
“The reality is that a clear majority of cases of euthanasia, both with and without request, go unreported and unchecked. Dutch claims of effective regulation ring hollow,” concluded the authors of the study, who also found that almost two-thirds of euthanasia and assisted suicide cases in 1995 were not reported. Dutch doctors said that 74 percent of patients said that their patients requested euthanasia because they thought that they would suffer, and that 56 percent wanted to prevent loss of dignity.
Execution of Sick Newborns. The two major Dutch medical journals routinely defend involuntary euthanasia. Preborns and even newborns with Down syndrome, duodenal atresia, cerebral hemorrhage, and other major diseases and birth defects are killed outright in the name of cost containment.
A 1991 report by the Royal Dutch Society of Medicine studied 2,816 amniocenteses and came to the Nazi-esque conclusion that “these analyses cost approximately $1.5 million. This is the same order of magnitude as the cost for taking care of one patient with Down syndrome in a medical institution for 60 years….In the light of a cost-benefit analysis, the conclusion is obvious.”
In July of 1992, the Dutch Pediatric Association announced its formal guidelines for killing handicapped newborns. Dr. Zier Versluys, chairman of the Association’s Working Group on Neonatal Ethics, said that “both for the parents and the children, an early death is better than life.” He also stated that euthanasia is an integral part of good medical practice regarding newborn babies. Attending doctors would judge if a baby’s “quality of life” is so low that the baby should be killed outright.
The 2006 “Groningen Protocol for Euthanasia of Newborns” allowed doctors to directly murder newborns whom they considered to be suffering an unacceptable degree of pain and “for whom a very poor quality of life, associated with sustained suffering, is predicted.” The Royal Dutch Medical Association took this even further, asserting that sick newborn babies may be killed if their parents feel distressed or unable to take on the task of caring for them.
Dutch researcher Hilda Buiting claimed: “In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave suffering foreseen in the future. This reality should be included in the considerations in adapting the guidelines. Given that we in the Netherlands find it important to exercise social control over the active killing of newborns, the guidelines should therefore be adjusted.”
Each year, health-care workers commit hundreds or even thousands of infanticides in the Netherlands with impunity. In one case, the Amsterdam Court of Appeals dropped charges against Dr. Henk Prins, who directly killed three-day-old Baby Rianne because she suffered from hydrocephaly, spina bifida, and leg deformities. This act grossly violated even the Netherlands’ loose laws that require that the patient must lucidly and repeatedly ask for death.
Turn of the Millennium Death. On November 28, 2000, the Netherlands became the second nation in the world to fully legalize euthanasia, following only Nazi Germany. The lower house voted 104 to 40 to formalize the loose euthanasia guidelines that had been in place in the country since 1993. On April 10, 2001, the Dutch Senate voted 46-28 to legalize euthanasia.
As the law now stands, anyone aged 16 and over can independently request euthanasia for themselves, and children from 12 to 15 years old may request it with parental consent.
The law requires that patients be in a state of “unremitting, unbearable suffering.” However, the law does not require that this suffering be physical. This means that a depressed person who is otherwise perfectly healthy may be euthanized.
One good example of this is the case of a 27-year-old ballerina who developed arthritis in her toes (but who was otherwise perfectly healthy). She was euthanized at her own request because she claimed her life was no longer worth living if she couldn’t dance.
Health Minister Els Borst drafted the euthanasia bill. She said, without the slightest awareness of irony, that “this [law] will create security for doctors and patients alike.”
As the bill was debated, Faye Girsh, president of the Hemlock Society (now “Compassion and Choices”), said, “We have admired what the people of Holland have been doing for the last 20 years.”
The Current Situation
The New Abortionists. Being elderly and ill in Holland is a frightening experience, because such people know that they have been officially pronounced expendable. This is because the primary objective of Dutch health “care” is not healing but cost containment. This is the most inhuman and inhumane legacy of the menace we call socialized medicine.
Consider the predicament of a 60-year-old Dutch person who simply cannot avoid seeking medical care in a hospital. He or she is acutely aware that the Royal Dutch Society of Pharmacology issues a “how to” euthanasia book to every doctor. This book contains recipes for poisons that doctors can place in food or inject so that they are almost impossible to detect during an autopsy.
The Dutch Euthanasia Society published Dr. Pieter Admiraal’s “how to” euthanasia manual in 1977. Euthanasia groups present this manual to every newly graduating doctor in Holland, and have also translated it into English and shipped it to the United States.
Every Dutch doctor knows the exact cost of each treatment for every common illness or injury beforehand, because they are written up on charts for easy reference. Hospital administrators instruct their general practitioners to use these charts and then give involuntary lethal injections to those elderly patients for whom care is deemed “too expensive.”
A July 2011 poll of Dutch general practitioners showed that 87 percent would agree to perform euthanasia, and only eight percent would refuse. Sixty-eight percent said that they had euthanized patients within the past five years. More than half said that they had done multiple euthanasias, and four percent said that they had committed more than ten euthanasias during the past five years.
Keep in mind that euthanasia is the direct killing of a human being, distinct from helping a person kill himself, which is classified as assisted suicide. According to the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, at least eight Dutch hospitals are committing widespread involuntary euthanasia.
Jack Kevorkian’s macabre dream of “obitoriums” staffed by professional “obitiatrists” has become a stark reality in the Netherlands.
All of this means that Dutch pain-management techniques are very primitive, since it is easier to simply kill people than it is to take the time and the effort required to diagnose and heal them.
Health Minister Els Borst, who championed the legalization of euthanasia, now says that it came “far too early,” because the Netherlands has provided little support for palliative care and support for the dying. She said that “in the Netherlands, we first listened to the political and societal demand in favor of euthanasia. Obviously, this was not in the proper order.”
Of course, now that the easy way of euthanasia has been opened wide, there is absolutely no motivation to help the sick and dying in any way — other than by offering them the needle.
As leading Dutch euthanasia advocate Dr. Pieter Admiraal asserted at the eighth biennial conference of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, “Every patient has the right to judge his suffering as unbearable and the right to ask his physician for euthanasia. . . . Pain is very seldom a reason for euthanasia.”
As with abortionists, the killer doctors have to harden themselves to the thought of eliminating human beings. Dr. Cornelius van der Meer said of his euthanasias: “You have to conquer something in yourself to do it. It’s not a natural act.”
In the 1980s, Dutch doctors who do euthanasias were advised to not drive alone to the “procedures,” and were urged to seek counseling before and after their killings from psychologists who specialize in treating doctors who regularly commit euthanasia.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress