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DUBROOM
ARTICLE SECTION |
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| Netherlands
Hospital Euthanizes Babies |
| AMSTERDAM,
Netherlands (AP) - Raising the stakes in an
excruciating ethical debate, a hospital in
the Netherlands - the first nation to permit
euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines
for mercy killings of terminally ill
newborns, and then made a startling
revelation: It has already begun carrying
out such procedures in a handful of cases
and reporting them to the government.
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The announcement last month by the Groningen
Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion
in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on
people incapable of deciding for themselves
whether they want to end their lives - a prospect
viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as
a natural evolution by advocates.
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association
KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an
independent board to review euthanasia cases for
terminally ill people "with no free
will," including children, the severely
mentally retarded, and people left in an
irreversible coma after an accident.
The Health Ministry is preparing its response to
the request, a spokesman said, and it may come as
soon as December.
Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it
legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a
lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of
adult patients suffering great pain with no hope
of relief.
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's
guidelines have come to be known, would create a
legal framework for permitting doctors to actively
end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar
pain from incurable disease or extreme
deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when
the child's medical team and independent doctors
agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no
prospect for improvement, and when parents think
it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where
children suffer brain damage from bleeding and
convulsions; and diseases where a child could only
survive on life support for the rest of its life
such as spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a
blistering illness.
The hospital said it carried out four such mercy
killings in 2003, and reported all cases to
government prosecutors - but there have been no
legal proceedings taken against them.
Catholic organizations and the Vatican have
reacted with outrage to Groningen's announcement,
and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend that the
proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral
compass.
"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has
descended already into a vertical cliff,"
said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based
critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere.
Experts say doctors outside of Holland do not
report cases for fear of prosecution.
"As things are, people are doing this
secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard
Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's' clinic.
"In the Netherlands we want to expose
everything, to let everything be subjected to
vetting."
According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of
child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in
2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and
five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported
by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years
were from other hospitals.
Groningen estimated the protocol would be
applicable in about 10 cases per year in the
Netherlands, a country with 16 million people.
Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium
has also legalized euthanasia, while in France,
legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is
currently under debate. In the United States, the
state of Oregon is alone in allowing
physician-assisted suicide, but this is under
constant legal challenge.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors
euthanize routinely in the United States but that
such practice is hidden.
"Measures that might marginally extend a
child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks
are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every
day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical
ethics at Davidson College and staff ethicist at
Carolinas Medical Center in the United States.
"Everybody knows that it happens, but there's
a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about
things they're not going to do."
More than half of all deaths occur under medical
supervision, so it's really about management and
method of death, Stell said.
ORIGINAL
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