Posted on 04/22/2005 2:19:49 PM PDT by Grzegorz 246
Nearly half the newborn babies who died in Flanders over a recent year-long period were helped to die by their doctors, a new study claims.
Pediatricians in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium either discreetly stopped treating the babies or, in 17 cases, illegally killed them with lethal doses of pain-killers.
The study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, examined the deaths of every baby that died within a year of birth in Flanders between August 1999 and July 2000.
The results of a survey on the causes of death are stark: pediatricians who responded to the survey admitted they had taken "end of life" decisions in more than half the cases.
Most commonly, that involved withholding or withdrawing treatment because physicians believed the baby had no real chance of survival or of a "bearable future".
In 40 cases, opiate pain-killers were used in doses with a potentially life-shortening effect.
In 17 cases, a lethal dose or lethal drugs were administered.
Overall, the research yielded information on 253 of the total of 298 infant deaths in the region over the period.
The lethal doses of pain-killers, which broke Belgian law, were mainly administered to babies less than a week old.
Most were premature babies with severe congenital malformations or handicaps, and what was described as a poor quality of life, or very premature babies with severe brain damage.
Eighty per cent of the doctors who completed an "attitudinal survey" agreed that "the task of the physician sometimes involves the prevention of unnecessary suffering by hastening death".
The report has gone further than any other study in exposing the degree to which infant euthanasia has become common in the most liberal regions of northern Europe.
In 2002, Belgium legalised euthanasia for adults suffering "constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain", and who are sufficiently conscious to make the request to die. Holland passed a similar law in 1995. In neither country is it legal to put infants to death.
Doctors in Holland have led a public campaign in recent years to have the law changed to reflect what they call the reality that pediatricians routinely assist children to die.
Not all Belgian pediatricians support a change in the law.
Dr Gunnar Naulaers, a neonatologist at the Catholic University Hospital, Leuven, said that his colleagues arguably hastened deaths, but only as a side-effect of easing severe pain in critically ill infants.
He said decisions to withhold or withdraw intensive care when an infant's prognosis was "hopeless" happened all over the world.
"In this unit, we increase doses until babies are comfortable and, of course, at the end of life higher doses are needed . . . that in healthy babies would be lethal."
It was vital to secure parents' agreement and to let them know when the end was near, Dr Naulaers said. "It's very important the parents should be left with the baby when he's dying, for their sake later."
Some Belgian doctors wanted laws to regulate euthanasia.
"We are a bit frightened about making a law. Where do you put your lines?" Dr Naulaers asked, listing potential pitfalls.
"What is a very handicapped baby, and who decides? If you say the parents, what if they are divorced?
"The patient cannot decide. It is a baby."
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How, um... "helpful".
In ancient Greece the malformed children were taken out in the wild for the wolves and vultures.
helped?
Here let me help you die. Help?
I hope I never receive this kind of "help", and feel sorry for those who get it.
I'll bet that criteria will drop more and more each year.
Not all of ancient Greece subscribed to this practice - Sparta did.
Newly-born babies were inspected by a committee of elders, and, if considered too weak, they were left to die by exposure on the slopes of Mount Taygetos.
Rest assured, far more horrific practices regarding infants persist to this day...but not in mainly Christian countries. The Euros are returning to their paganistic ways too fast. The new Pope (as well as other Christian leaders) has lots of work to do.
Exactly.
Eventually the standard of where the "line" is drawn is whenever the infant is judged not to have a productive life ahead that will be of overall financial benefit to the state. So that means Down's syndrome babies and babies with any degree of brain damage are doomed, among others.
Welcome to the future-- or is that the past, of Nazi eugenics?
And of course the US Supreme Court will use their (European) laws promoting the culture of death to interpret our own constitution, as some justices already do.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
(I guess I just don't want to believe that an OB-GYN would simply "off" 50% of their success stories.)
Sounds familiar.
"Helped to die?" For some reason, this reminds me of something a friend of mine told me recently. My friend, a social worker, was visiting the state prison, where he met a convict who told of abducting a man and driving him out ino the desert. There he and his accomplice robbed the man, beat him, and left him on the ground bound and bloodied.
As they were leaving, the victim pleaded with them: "Hey man, don't leave me here like this!"
The criminals thought about it for a minute, then shot him in the head. For that, they were convicted of murder and given life sentences.
They think the sentence is terribly unfair. "Hey, it was what he wanted!" one said. "I just done like he asked me to."
It wasn't murder, they reasoned, because the man didn't want to be let to suffer like that.
There is a reason we call it a “slippery slope”.
A conversation in the future at a birthing centre in a Dutch-speaking region of Belgium………………
Mom: “It’s a girl? We wanted a boy first.”
OB-GYN: ”Right then. We can check you out this afternoon. We will dispose of the “disappointment” for you. There will be an 85 euro disposal charge, but we can bill your insurance. Better luck next time.”
Mom: “Thank you, Doctor.”
Funny, I was thinking about that poem, think there is even one in those graves that fought so that they could kill their babies? I don't.
Not in the slightest.
Helped to die......sounds so harmless and caring doesn't it? LIke helping someone cross the street, filling out their tax forms, opening a jar of peanut butter, or carrying groceries in from the car. They make it sound like dying was what the babies wanted.
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