Posted on 02/03/2005 3:07:29 PM PST by Cornpone
AMSTERDAM — A Dutch pro-euthanasia group has launched an investigation into claims that doctors are trying to avoid performing requested euthanasia or are continually delaying carrying out the request.
The Dutch Voluntary End to Life Association (NVVE) said its large-scale investigation among surviving relatives into unperformed euthanasia requests, will be completed by the end of next year, newspaper De Volkskrant reported.
As the NVVE presented a book of interviews with surviving relatives on Thursday, director Rob Jonquière said many of the interviews indicate that doctors are looking for excuses not to carry out euthanasia. "We want to know how often this occurs," he said.
Research commissioned by the Dutch government has found that of the 9,700 requests for euthanasia lodged in 2001, only 3,800 were carried out. In one-third of the requests not carried out, doctors said the patient had already died before euthanasia could be performed.
In 20 percent of the cases, doctors were not prepared to assist a patient commit suicide because not all the legal requirements had been met.
The views of patients and relatives were not included in the research for two former studies and it remains unclear if the comments from doctors were correct. Jonquière said if doctors try and delay euthanasia, they would not be too keen to admit that to researchers.
The NVVE has asked a social medicine professor with the Free University medical centre in Amsterdam, Gerrit van der Waal to conduct the investigation. Van der Waal has in recent years led two investigations into the euthanasia practices among doctors.
Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since April 2002. The law allows assisted suicides if the patient officially requests to die, is suffering from extreme pain or a terminal illness and a second medical opinion has been sought. The Netherlands was the first nation to legalise assisted suicides.
Just quit being a doctor? Isn't that a little extreme?
Quit being a Doctor beats murdering a patient if you ask me. No question in my mind. Is there in yours? If those are the only choices. I cannot imagine anyone even thinking that having to pick between those two alternatives would be a problem.
I just don't think that's the only alternative. There must be some other way. Being a doctor isn't like being a stamp collector. You dont just quit. I must admit, I don't have the answer, but quitting has to be a last resort, not the first.
I don't know if you have seen this older article. It turned my stomach:
Euthanasia has also entered the pediatric wards, where eugenic infanticide has become common even though babies cannot ask to be killed. According to a 1997 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, approximately 8 percent of all Dutch infant deaths result from lethal injections. The babies deemed killable are often disabled and thus are thought not to have a "livable life." The practice has become so common that 45 percent of neonatologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to Lancet surveys had killed babies.
It gets worse: Repeated studies sponsored by the Dutch government have found that doctors kill approximately 1,000 patients each year who have not asked for euthanasia. This is not only a violation of every guideline, but an act that Dutch law considers murder. Nonvoluntary euthanasia has become so common that it even has a name: "Termination without request or consent."
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/smith200312230101.asp
Being a doctor is no better or worse than any other job. You don't murder people. It is not extreme to refuse to or to refuse to work in a system that makes murder required or even practiced. Quitting being a doctor beats joining being a murderer in my mind any day. I don't get why any doc would practice in any place where murder was even encouraged.
Even those already here ought to be stripped of their licenses, and no Dutch medical education degree should be recognized.
I'm going to write to my HMO to make sure that they have no such people on their staff.
"Nonvoluntary euthanasia has become so common that it even has a name: "Termination without request or consent."
For the uninitiated, this is the cold and desolate land known as "The Bottom of the Slippery Slope."
It has been in plain view for several years, despite euro-killers' best efforts to deny and cover up.
You do have a consistent pattern don't you. It's far from the "seamless garment" type of argument though because in your logic, everybody ends up dead ~ and sooner rather than later.
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