Posted on 09/08/2005 7:38:51 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Amsterdam, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) -- A new analysis of Dutch doctors by researchers in the Netherlands finds that they are more frequently using euthanasia to kill sick children, sometimes taking the country's assisted suicide laws as far as they will allow.
The European nation legalized euthanasia in 2002 and previous reports show Dutch doctors granting most patients' request to be killed.
The new study involves the deaths of 64 children during a four month period and finds that doctors hastened the deaths of 42 of them. The government-sponsored study gave the doctors immunity from having their names revealed or being prosecuted for their actions and their responses were kept anonymous.
According to the Irish Examiner newspaper, the report finds doctors engaged in actions varying from withholding life support from patients doctors believed would die anyway to administering drugs such as morphine with the intent of hurrying a patient's death.
One case involved euthanasia in the strictest sense -- a doctor making the decision to directly take a patient's life because he believed the patient was beyond hope.
Astrid Vrakking of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam told the Examiner that, in other situations, the actions "take place at the boundaries of what is legally allowed."
"Whether or not these boundaries are supportive or rightful is, of course, a matter of debate," Vrakking added.
The report describes one case where physicians gave an 18 month old child suffering from a progressive neurodegenerative disease sedatives and drugs after the parents requested them.
Meanwhile, an August report in the August issue of Archives of Internal Medicine claims Dutch doctors are properly handling euthanasia and assisted suicide requests that come their way. The study finds 44 percent of people who seek assisted suicide are killed, 13 percent change their minds and doctors refuse in only 12 percent of the cases.
Susan M. Wolf, J.D., of the University of Minnesota Law School, has studied euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands and doesn't think it would work in the United States.
"The Dutch have struggled mightily for more than two decades to devise a system to oversee physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia and keep both practices within agreed bounds. It is not clear that they have succeeded," Wolf says.
The study was published Monday in the September issue of Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
I remember something like this happening in Germany about 60 years ago. ping to Moral Absolutes list
What a sad worled we live in when we kill our most helpless. Why don't people realize taht we are all born with a purpose and that God desides our fate, not man?
Sarcasm/off
Just late term abortions. Move along. Nothing to see.
I can't imagine the hell of seeing your child terminally ill, wracked with pain, and dying by inches.
There's an old saying- "Tend the wounded, heal the sick, but let the dying spirit go."
I say, give someone who is dying enough pain medication to make them comfortable. At some point, the amount of medication needed to ease their pain will stop their heart. Is that murder?
You mean, like Terri?
No, but if you intentionally hasten the death it is.
Mrs VS
I'll bet there is one subset of sick children that are not affected: children of Dutch doctors.
She was starved to death- and as far as I could tell, not in any pain (before they starved her, anyway.) That was murder, not euthanasia, despite what the Left claims.
She wasn't dying fast enough (at all, actually) to suit her husband- that was the problem.
Ping to more of Hitlers plans, still alive and active.
Human Life, no matter what 'quality' someone chooses to say it has, is inherently valuable because it was given to us by our Creator. We are his handiwork, and He is truly the author of our days. There is no way to stop the flood once you decide it's ok for this one to go...the limits will always be pushed because of convenience. Look at abortion in our own country. When we let the dying spirit go, we should perhaps be holding the hand of the earthly body, not pushing it (drugging it) away. *I live in one of the few (I believe there are two) states that allow Euthanasia. As tin foily as it may sound, the forces behind it are always evil.*
Thanks - I'll be pinging this out tomorrow. I've been AWOL on this ping list; all my FR attention was riveted on the hurricane and its aftermath.
I do appreciate being alerted to relevant articles! If you ever ping me to one and I don't respond, you can always try me again, sometimes things get lost on my comments page because it only holds 20, which is WAY too few.
Grrr.
May the Lord have mercy!
"In Holland, and Belgium, the very old, and the very sick fear the trip to the hospital- because they may be euthanized against their will."
Crosslinking:
You saw what Katrina did to New Orleans. God could do that to you too with a tsunami.
I would say in cases like this there should hardly any ethical objection to using controversial medications like Vioxx, as well as the classic opiates. You know it's not like they were about to die....
Maybe, maybe not.
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