Posted on 11/30/2004 11:17:14 AM PST by Pyro7480
Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Raising the stakes in an excruciating ethical debate, a hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures in a handful of cases and reporting them to the government.
The announcement last month by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded, and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.
The Health Ministry is preparing its response to the request, a spokesman said, and it may come as soon as December.
Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life such as spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a blistering illness.
The hospital said it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors — but there have been no legal proceedings taken against them.
Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to Groningen's announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend that the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.
"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside of Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.
"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's' clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."
According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.
Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country with 16 million people.
Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States but that such practice is hidden.
"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in the United States. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."
More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.
Bump!
Who will grow the tulips?
Ah yes, the 'killing cures societal ills and relieves responsibility' approach. I too am finding your assertive remarks interesting, though somewhat disgusting. You do represent a significant segment of this nation's citizens.
Boxer is probably the single worst product that Kings County ever exported.
Too bad she didn't take Chuck Schumer with her when she left.
I agree. If life is sacred (and it is) then ALL life is sacred. And when motivations for speeding up others' deaths are looked at carefully, there is always a component of selfishness - it's easier for those who aren't dying (yet) if the ones who are dying have their departure hastened.
I believe that a "liberal education" in the old traditional sense of the trivium and quadrivium is the best education anyone can have to fit him for any job going.
They didn't "date" Princeton girls even after we were there. I had lots of good friends who happened to be male, but no romantic interest on campus at all.
(Of course, that may have had something to do with the fact that my now husband (of 27 years) was in the Army and 6'6" and 200 # - he used to come by on weekends in his greens to intimidate anybody who might be expressing an interest that way . . . )
I saw the Huntersville Church website & it looks very good, but 6 miles is a long way when you don't have a car (does Davidson allow freshmen to have cars?)
I guess the dead babies can push them up?
I'll check and see how the Catholic kids are getting to church...
Can't say much for Muslims when they're willing instead to let the baby grow up a little and then put bombs on him and send him to kill a few Israelis.
Thanks! I really appreciate that! If they have a regular convoy or caravan down to Huntersville, that would be great (it also means she'd be hanging with the devout kids, which is a Good Thing.)
Abortion BEYOND the third trimester.
All Ponzi schemes are losers for the last ones in, if enough new suckers participants can't be found.
I'm not the one asking the government to be involved. I'm saying that the government should stay out of health care, and let the patients and physicians decide. The problem addressed in the article is those patients who cannot communicate their preferences.
So, I agree...let's not let end of life decisions be "the government's business." Let's allow a person to obtain and use means to end his own life that are more civilized than dehydration. Let's allow a person assist a person in need, without harassing and prosecuting them.
When people are getting ready to die, they don't want to drink any more. You can call it dehydration, but they don't*want*to*drink.
Like you said, anecdotes aren't going to change things, and your experiences fail to account for those who aren't in those end stages where they don't want to drink. The dehydration to which I referred was the removal of hydration tubes (for someone in a PVS, for example), but just as relevant are those who are concious and would simply like a way to actively end things less painfully rather than wait for the decline.
What if a planned departure is desired by the person who is ill? Do you think those people who help their spouses die peacefully are doing so selfishly? I believe many times people selfishly prevent others from escaping the pain they are in, and guilt them into staying alive beyond when they'd want to.
Likewise, we must revere rights and compassion.
Because doing the compassionate thing would require a moral compass and not just some clichés and washing of the hands. People treat their animals better than they'd treat a suffering human. :-(
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