[Houghton M.]

“Actually the assisted suicide cases represent 1.2% of all deaths in Netherlands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands";

Yes, and unemployment is 8.3 % and Obama is going to cut the deficit in half and the Stimulus created 300 billion jobs.

You believe everything you find on FactCheck and Wikipedia?

You think the Dutch government would admit that 10% of the deaths are euthanasia? If the Dutch government admits 1.2 % you can be darn sure the real amount is much higher.

My guess is that a qualifier was missing — 10% of hospital deaths, perhaps. Santorum may have goofed but not in any significant way. That the Dutch are angry at him only indicates who much they’ve invested in lying to themselves about how principled and limited their euthanasia program really is.

Santorum probably was basing himself on an estimate by pro-life analysts trying to get to the real number through the fog of Dutch government stats.

[muawiyah]

You are hitting it on the head when it comes to the Dutch government hiding statistics. They even lie to themselves in their census ~ has to do with the subtle way they count "white folks" ~ if your mother is of East Asian origin, you are counted one way. If your father is of East Asian origin, you are counted another way.

Most Dutch are blissfully unaware of that differentiation in their laws regarding ethnic counting. Their immigration laws for Indonesians differ depending on whether or not your pa was Dutch or Indonesian.

Here we have a Dutch defender who does not want anybody to notice that EUTHANASIA is a considerably different act than ASSISTED SUICIDE, and certainly of a whole different order from INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA.

No civilized nation should allow involuntary euthanasia (aka MURDER) to go unpunished. Actually no nation that wants to be thought civilized should allow physicians to kill their patients.

[true believer forever]

These two articles are fairly statistically enlarged... one is a little less recent, but the other is more comprehensive. They seem straightforward, although I don’t think anyone trusts medical research as they once did...

The JAMA has the available extract in pdf available on the right...

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/278/10/817.2.short

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2733179/