Dutch Set to Expand Euthanasia Guidelines

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050929/ap_on_he_me/netherlands_euthanasia ^

[jimbergin]

The Dutch government intends to expand its current euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the parents' consent, The Associated Press has learned.

A letter outlining the new directives was expected to be submitted to parliament for discussion by mid-October, but the new policy will not require a change of law, Dutch Health Ministry spokeswoman Annette Dijkstra said Thursday.

The new guidelines are likely to spark an outcry from the Vatican, right-to-life proponents and some advocacy groups for the handicapped who abhor the current policy that allows adult euthanasia if the patients request it and if certain conditions are met.

Proponents and opponents agree the change is doubly important because it will provide the model for how the Dutch will treat other cases in which patients are unable to say whether they want to live or die, such as the mentally retarded or elderly people who have become demented

[steel_resolve]

Geeze o whiz, these Dutch are friggin nuts.

[PeteB570]

Will it include brain dead MSM types?

[sgtbono2002]

They will expand on it now and then they will expand on it again and again until pretty soon if a Dutch billionaire needs a new heart he can have his choice of donors.

[little jeremiah]

If you add a keyword or two when you post an article, it will turn up on FR searches; otherwise not. Just a helpful hint.

(Note to self - later pingout.)

[Mrs. Don-o]

"The new guidelines are likely to spark an outcry from the Vatican, right-to-life proponents and some advocacy groups for the handicapped..."

... and ANYBODY ELSE who holds even a minimal ethic of human rights as understood over the past 500+ years from Bartolome de las Casas through Thomas Jefferson to the Nuremberg jurists and all the rest of those Western civilization guys. I thought the Dutch were supposed to be heirs of all that.

Oh, well. As Jesse Jackson says, "Hey hey ho ho, Western Civ has got to go."

(In a spirit of fair play, I do have to acknowledge that Jesse Jackson defended Terri Schiavo. I give him credit --gratefully ---for that. I suppose the Dutch would give given her a morphine O.D. as soon as she hit the floor.)

[556x45]

Its like everything the govt assumes control over. If the current program is good (whether it is or not) then making it bigger and more encompassing should be even better. It's just like taxes, once the hand is in the pocket there's no going back.