AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - 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, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.
The announcement 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, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.
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 severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.
The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.
Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend 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 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 of 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 and elsewhere, but that the 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 in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "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.
I'm sorry but what's the issue here? They're not killing babies willy nilly. They obviously have the parents' consent to do so and if the parents abandon the baby what other option is left to the hospital? Keep the baby on life support, in pain and with no hope of recovery. Yes that is so much more 'humane'.
The euthanasia is being carried out in a morally acceptable way, with full advice and consent of those involved and a baby has no more faculty to decide its own life when it hopeless and in pain or worse. There is nothing here save the Vatican speaking out of one side of its mouth while protecting child abusers and the US speaking of moral compasses and the like.
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If a trained, medical doctor says a child is almost positively terminally ill, explain to me the precise logic of having it die slowly by disease or deformity.
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The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Generally arguments for euthanasia hinge on consent, which is impossible in this situation.
Given that newborns are INCAPABLE of giving consent/denying it, and the fact that the PARENTS' consent is usually considered sufficient because of this, your point is what exactly?
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Batman wrote:
Given that newborns are INCAPABLE of giving consent/denying it, and the fact that the PARENTS' consent is usually considered sufficient because of this, your point is what exactly?
Allowing parents to decide whether or not they want to kill their children is a distinctly Roman virtue, ironically enough.
Do you want to give parents that much power?
And if you are not giving parents that much power, where, exactly, is the line to be drawn? I have, I may note, defended the Roman practice of the exposure of infants before. I am just raising the question of what sort of grounds this is morally defensible upon. Is it only acceptable in certain cases? Or do we consider children up to a certain age to be not fully human, and thus under the full control of their parents up and including matters like this? That argument has certainly been made by certain respected scientists before. If not that, then why only special cases?
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Marina, whenever a minor is in a situation where his/her survival is unlikely to the extreme, it's the parent's decision wether or not to try to save him/her. What's the difference?
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
The special case cited here is the concensus by trained, experienced medical professionals that the infant is terminally and irrevocably ill.
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Euthanasia debate in Europe is focuses on children up to 12 years old
By Matthew Schofield
Knight Ridder Newspapers
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.
...
"Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate," said Henk Jochemsen, the director of Holland's Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. "Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory."
... Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the 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 in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. "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.
Several nurses I have talked to confirm this. People are given massive doses of painkillers (large enough to be damaginng to the patients health) to ease them on their way and certain procedures are not done. It's rutine. The Dutch are just being honest.
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