Posted on 01/08/2005 10:25:01 AM PST by sionnsar
When I was in college philosophy classes, one category of argument that was regularly disparaged was the "slippery slope." My professors, of course, worked under a handicap: they'd never encountered the phenomena of Dutch euthanasia:
Doctors can help patients who ask for help to die even though they may not be ill but "suffering through living," concludes a three year inquiry commissioned by the Royal Dutch Medical Association. The report argues that no reason can be given to exclude situations of such suffering from a doctor’s area of competence.
The conclusion has reopened a fierce debate over what constitutes grounds for requesting euthanasia, as it contradicts a landmark Supreme Court decision that a patient must have a "classifiable physical or mental condition." The 2002 ruling upheld a guilty verdict on a GP for helping his 86 year old patient die, even though he was not technically ill but obsessed with his physical decline and hopeless existence.
The Dutch euthanasia law does not specifically state that a patient must have a physical or mental condition, only that a patient must be "suffering hopelessly and unbearably."
The new report does not rule on how doctors should respond if a patient without a classifiable condition should approach them for help but says that doctors believe that some cases of "suffering through living" could be judged "unbearable and hopeless" and therefore fall within the boundaries of the existing euthanasia law.
The report argues that the Supreme Court criteria are unhelpful in defining the limits of medical practice in varied and complex cases. It is "an illusion," it argues, to suggest that a patient's suffering can be "unambiguously measured according to his illness."
Jos Dijkhuis, the emeritus professor of clinical psychology who led the inquiry, said that it was "evident to us that Dutch doctors would not consider euthanasia from a patient who is simply 'tired of, or through with, life,'" (terms used in the original court case). Instead his committee chose the term "suffering through living," where a patient may present a variety of physical and mental complaints.
He said there was "enormous protest" from doctors to the Supreme Court's ruling. "In more than half of cases we considered, doctors were not confronted with a classifiable disease. In practice the medical domain of doctors is far broader...We see a doctor's task is to reduce suffering, therefore we can't exclude these cases in advance. We must now look further to see if we can draw a line and if so where."
His report recommends caution, saying that doctors currently lack sufficient expertise and that their roles remain unclear. It recommends drawing up protocols by which to judge "suffering through living" cases and collecting and analysing further data. In the meantime it recommends an "extra phase" to treatment, where therapeutic and social solutions can first be sought.
Rather than seek more effective ways of treating people, doctors in the Netherlands looks for ever more reasons to rationalize killing them. The ever-growing God complex of Dutch medical practitioners is a fearful thing to behold.
(I think you covered it all, HTB!)
Makes Kavorkian look almost sane. NOT!
I don't what anyone to take this the wrong way but WWII and the death camps prevented eugenics from becoming a US and British policy.
Once they were hit in the face with the unvarnished truth about where their current path was leading they, to their credit, abandon it.
But the evil lives on.
Thank you. Good to see you back on line.
That's true, before 1945, eugenics was advocated right across the political spectrum (yes, even by conservatives - Winston Churhill was one), but like you said, the Holocaust brought that crashing to the ground - thank G-d.
In the back he talks about the eugenics movement. I knew it was a major movement because of personal family history but I never knew just how big and how wide spread the belief was.
Teddy Roosevelt was a supporter. I never knew that.
You should be nicer on your first day here, you know.
"The discrimination against "imperfect people" goes all the way back to the Levitical commandments in the Bible, that people with physical disabilities be barred from the Temple."
Discrimination, different treatment, is NOT the same as killing people.
They already tried that. We got out. :)
Thanks!
Tell me, where are you from oh post and run troll?
Tafkaltd?
Taotao?
That you?
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