Posted on 12/03/2004 12:40:37 AM PST by nickcarraway
Amsterdam, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) -- Dutch doctors are asking the Netherlands government for guidelines on so-called "mercy killings" after revelations surfaced this week that a hospital in the European nation has been killing several newborns a year it determines are not healthy enough to live.
The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has asked the Netherlands Ministry of Health to put together a panel to evaluate when euthanasia can be used on people "with no free will," CNN reports.
That would include both adults and children who are unable to make their own health care decisions because of severe disabilities.
The current legal standards in place only address patients who can decide whether they want to live or die.
Those standards indicate the patient must freely choose to die and make such a request on several occasions. The patient must be in severe pain and the patient's doctor must get a second opinion from another physician agreeing to the request.
Dr. Eduard Verhagen, of the hospital's pediatric clinic, told NPR that the babies who had been euthanized were born with incurable conditions so serious "(we) felt that the most humane course would be to allow the child to die and even actively assist them with their death."
"They are very rare cases of extreme suffering. In these cases, the diagnosis was extreme spina bifada," Verhagen added.
However, spina bifada can be diagnosed during pregnancy and some unborn children have had surgery to correct the damage the condition causes.
According to an Associated Press report this week, Groningen Academic Hospital has created guidelines for doctors there to euthanize newborns who are suffering from pain associated with incurable diseases or extreme physical deformities.
Known as the Groningen Protocol, and announced last month, it allows euthanasia when a baby's medical team and independent doctors agree there is no prospect for improving pain.
The child's parents also must agree to the request to end the child's life.
According to the AP report, the hospital carried out such euthanasia requests in the last few years and reported them to the Dutch government, which has taken no action against it.
Pro-life groups were shocked and saddened by the news.
"A society or culture that does not respect the innate dignity of every human life inevitably places value judgments on the worth of an individual's life," responded Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. "To decide that it is better to kill a person, regardless of how sick or helpless, than to care for that person is unconscionable."
"Unless this policy is rejected by the international community, the culture of death will have taken one more step into the modern world," Perkins added.
Holland was the first country to legalize the practice of euthanasia -- allowing doctors to end the life of a patient, with their consent, who is suffering from a terminal illness or incurable condition.
Approved in 2002, Dutch law allows adult patients suffering from incurable diseases to request assisted suicide. Teenagers under the age of 16 must have their parents approval, but the newly proposed measure would drop that to 12 years of age and would allow children to be euthanized.
The proposal to allow children to be euthanized has prompted Belgium to consider a similar law.
Belgian lawmakers are putting forward a measure that would expand the country's legal euthanasia law to allow doctors to end the lives of children without parental permission.
Correct. It will eventually be based on an unemotional, cost-burden/benefit ratio. For example:
| Patient life expectancy: | 63 years |
| Cost to preserve life at adequate levels : | 10K/yr * 63 yrs (630,000) |
| Expected productivity of patient : | 1 |
| Cost Benefit Ratio* : | 630,000 : 1 |
| Termination status : | 1 (Immediate termination) |
*Cost benefit ratio exceeding 4 requires immediate termination
Define "take them down."
No profanity please.
Great points, but FWIW the personal attack and posting in the last paragraph kinda defeat the message.
posting = posturing
That's a rhetorical question, right? Do you know anything about Hitler, and the first thing he did when he came to power?
Please tell me that was a rhetorical question.
They live in a perpetual utopia...disabled need not apply to their world.
The world let Hitler slid on his euthanasia program and look where it led the world.
Before the likes of people like him can get to my child they will have to go through me...and I'm a fighter. I won't let them slid by.
When a protagonist is talking to --versus with-- an opponent, the recipient loses his individual identity in the mind of the speaker, and it can become more difficult to persuade.
It is important to try to figure out the source of the other guy's perspective if there is going to be any hope of making a case. Doing things to turn-off the listener may feel good for the moment, but the long term cost is that he may deepen his entrenchment within his position.
FWIW...
Fascist get no more free rides on the freedom of expression train. The line ends here.
I see black and white, you see gray. I see them trying to murder my child with their entrenchment. You want to analyze and psychoanalyze them. I want to crush them before it's open season on the disabled and infirm.
You go your route...I'll go mine.
Maybe because it's the same philosophy which was embraced and carried out by the Nazis. Duh!
This philosophy was recently carried out in Britain against the wishes of the parents by sanction of the court.
Uhhhh, actually it could be Michael and Terri Shiavo. Think America isn't close to it?
LOL! Then why are you moralizing?
There's nothing funnier than a moralizing atheist.
Oh, so your philosophy boils down to it's all about you.
>..."would like to know something about you so that I can better understand your views..."<
- xm177e2 appears to be a Nietsche follower, (a nihilist, I believe)
Nietsche quote: "God is Dead"
see post#12 :
xm177e2: >"There is no God, morality is for us to figure out on our own."<
My understanding is: In a nihilst's view, there is no higher law than mans; and since there is no God, no afterlife, than morality is all to be determined by whatever current societal opinion is.
Murderers of children get to me every time.
Logic and civility seem to be forgotten momentarily in my righteous indignation.
Only to discover the chink in his flawed logic.
I see them trying to murder my child with their entrenchment. I see black and white, you see gray.
There is no denying that in this world, there is good and evil.
Unfortunately crushing them won't stop the next wave of evildoers, BUT bringing people "into the light" helps tip the scale in our favor. (Majority doesn't really rule; only a super-majority can stop the evil ones in their path.)
<* chuckle *>
I'd bet these same people are appalled at Hitler.
YET they do the same thing - murder those that in their eyes are IMPERFECT - as if they are perfect.
SICK!
Does the nihilist recognize the need for effective long term outcomes?
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