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.
Have you considered Christendom? How long have you got to decide?
Another slip down the slippery slope. Hitler would be proud.
It's legal to do it for free and people go to some bars for precisely this sort of service, with little stigma in this day and age. The only difference is whether money is being exchanged.
They're probably already doing that - technically, we're all "terminal", and Down's etc. are lifelong illnesses.
No, they bear their children and then wait for them to get big enough to strap bombs to themselves and murder in the name of Allah.
She is anxious to go to a school where there's a core of conservative students. The scuttlebutt I had heard was that Davidson is considerably more liberal than W&L. Glad to hear there are conservatives there - my daughter is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun . . .
I'm a little concerned because there's no Catholic church near Davidson - there is a parish in the next town down the road, but I know what a fuss and bother it is to find a ride especially when you're a freshman. There is a Sunday night Mass in the chapel, but when I was at college I never did like that - and I can't imagine a Mass celebrated in a Presbyterian chapel . . . well, really I can because I also went to a Presbyterian school - but I'm not sure I like it. . . .
W&L on the other hand has a Catholic parish literally at the corner of the campus. Not to mention every denomination you can think of in town (including a breakaway Anglican congregation in a church that looks like it ought to be on a model railway layout).
On the other hand, the Davidson campus is gorgeous and beautifully cared for, and the Universal Loaner Bicycles are a very nice touch.
Ultimately the decision is my daughter's (within reason), and of course the colleges in question . . . although she's making good grades at a hard school and she just got her first SAT score (she's a junior) 800/650 . . . yeah the math needs work, but she's no more math-oriented than I am.
Unless we, as a country, affirm the right to life from the womb to the grave... your prognostication is the only logical course that we are on.
No one will ever admit that this is all about economics. Unwanted babies, the handicapped, the imprisoned, and the elderly/convalescent are all drains on the economy because they are not 'producers'. They are drains on personal lives because they are also drains on personal economies.
Hence, "inconvenience".
This is appalling, but not surprising. As Europe writes its own death warrant, we're not far behind.
The biggest problem with social security is we stupid people are living to damn long. Nice system.
Not using extra-ordinary measure to keep alive an infant who will never survive is NOT the same as killing it.
If a child will never survive why prolong its agony?
I'm concerned about Christendom from the point of view of academic rigor. Their median SAT scores for admitted freshmen seem relatively low, as does the required GPA. But on the other hand those indicators can be deceptive . . .
"If you don't see the similarities to Nazi Germany, then you're blind."
Rather than hurling invectives, try answering the question I posed without Hitlerian references.
Understood. But then again, if someone gets "dinner and a movie" and then spends the night with their date, the IRS doesn't consider it taxable income!!! :)
It wasn't invective. It was truth. In Nazi Germany, they executed deemed "inconvenient." They're now reaching that point in the Netherlands, where you can now decide to kill someone who "can't decide for themselves."
This is not euthanasia but a choice not to prolong an impending death. Euthanasia is actively killing a human being by passive or active means. The difference in treatment lies between prolonging life and prolonging death.
chilling!
You should be very proud :)
"I hear you. I also hear the ones wary of the slippery slope. I know that if I were terminally ill, and there was no way to relieve my pain, I do not want to linger nor do I want someone forcing me to."
Wow - someone who answered my post without Hitlerian references and in a rational manner! Thanks!
I agree too that I should be able to choose the method of my passing if I don't want to linger in pain and spend all the money of my family on keeping me in a vegetative, unproductive, unlivable state.
What's amusing is that if you polled the people in this thread on whether they'd want their tax dollars to help raise these permanently, severely handicapped people who'll never contribute to society, I bet you'd get a huge percentage AGAINST funding such health care initiatives. The alternative is to force the family to pay for this expensive care and ultimately -- and quickly -- break them and force them to live off the gov't.
My views on abortion usually end up pleasing no one, and I have posted them before. But one thing which always struck me is the argument that "the baby isn't wanted" as a reason for abortion. I always said that argument didn't hold water, because it COULD be applied to the old age home, etc. etc. etc.
I thought my comment in those discussions was a warning - not a prediction!
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