"Don't Kill Me" Is the Dutch Plea as Legal Euthanasia Looms

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, DEC. 5, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- With the approach of
legal euthanasia, a number of sick and poor people in this country are
beginning to carry a printed statement in their pockets with a simple
message: They don't want doctors to put them to death.

While liberal groups applauded the recent approval of euthanasia by the
lower house of the Dutch Parliament, others prefer to take steps to deny
doctors or relatives the "license to kill" unconscious patients.

This facet of life in the Netherlands was outlined in an interview with
Dutch Dr. Karel Gunning, president of the World Federation of Pro-Life
Doctors. The interview appeared in today's issue of the Italian newspaper
Avvenire.

Quoting the 1991 Remmelink Report, the first official government study of
the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands, Gunning said that there were
about 2,000 cases of euthanasia a year. That number that jumped to 3,000 in
1996, the physician said. Official figures estimate there are some 3,200
euthanasia cases every year, in this nation of 15.8 million.

Gunning concludes that the law does no more than legalize what, so far, was
done secretly. "In the beginning, the explicit request of the patient was
necessary," he said. "Now, one can do away with the comatose, and children
with severe malformations. Initially, euthanasia was allowed only for
terminal patients, but later it was extended to people with psychic
depression."

He recalled a case in Assen in the spring of 1993. A panel of three Dutch
magistrates absolved a psychiatrist who collaborated in his patient's
suicide; the latter was a healthy 50-year-old woman who had lost her two
sons and was just divorced.

The court stated that psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot acted legitimately
because his patient was competent to make the free decision to die, that her
suffering was irremediable, and that the doctor had complied with the legal
requirement of a "force majeure," which obliged him to give precedence to
his patient's well-being over the letter of the law, which formally
prohibited assisted suicide and euthanasia.

In another case, euthanasia "benefited" a 25-year-old girl suffering from
anorexia. Moreover, recently, Edward Brongersma, an 86-year-old former
Socialist senator, requested and succeeded in having a physician "put an
end" to him, not because he was sick or depressed, but because he was tired
of living.

Gunning believes that "the path to death opened in 1971, when the Dutch
Medical Association allowed abortion. This removed the pillar of
professional ethics: the unconditional defense of human life."

"When killing in one case is accepted as the 'only solution,' it will end by
finding hundreds of other cases in which the 'solution' of killing becomes
acceptable," he said.

Gunning quoted documented cases: "I know an oncologist who was treating a
patient for lung cancer. [The patient] suffered a respiratory crisis that
necessitated hospitalization. The patient rebelled; 'I do not want
euthanasia,' she implored. The doctor assured her this wouldn't happen.

"He himself accompanied her to the clinic and cared for her. After 36 hours,
the patient was breathing normally, her general condition improved. The
doctor went off to sleep. The next morning, he did not find the patient in
her bed. A colleague had 'put an end' to her, because there weren't enough
free beds."

"People are afraid," observed Gunning, who suffers from Parkinson's disease.
He referred to another case of an elderly patient who was hospitalized in
great pain. "The son asked the doctors to 'speed up the process,' so that
the father's funeral could be held before [the son's] holidays abroad, for
which he had already made reservations. The doctors agreed and increased the
morphine.

"However, a few hours later, the patient sat up in bed in good humor. He had
finally had sufficient morphine given to him to assuage his pain and he was
better! Incidents like these are discussed among doctors as something
normal, as though it is normal to kill a patient to please the relatives."

Gunning's World Federation of Pro-life Doctors has presented a proposal to
the United Nations to be included as an appendix to the Declaration of Human
Rights: "Every state has the duty to protect the life of all its citizens
without discriminations."
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