Life Issues

EUTHANASIA ISSUES

DANCE WITH DEATH

As activists attempt to allure Americans with the false light of assisted suicide, the dark reality of the Netherlands makes clear why we must decline this dance with death.

Published in Family Voice , January/February 2001 (first serial rights)
By Jonathan Imbody, CMA Senior Policy Analyst - Washington Bureau

Slumped in a chair surrounded by formidable tomes on philosophy, religion and sociology, Henk Reitsema still cannot fathom the tragedy that four years ago robbed his family of their grandfather.

A Christian thinker in the mold of Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the articulate young leader of the L’Abri Fellowship in Holland struggles to describe his feelings after learning that his grandfather had become one of thousands of Dutch victims of involuntary euthanasia—medical killing without the patient’s consent.

Henk explains, “I remember for a very long time--not only a short while--but for a very long time, not being able to place my emotions properly. Numb was the first response, just not knowing what to feel.

“But what could I do with the data that somebody had been involved with that death? You imagined, ‘What was the doctor thinking in making this kind of decision? How do you view him? Did he murder your Granddad? Those feelings, you don’t know what to do with them. It’s very, very strange.”

Henk remembers, “The whole aftermath was also very surreal for all of us because it was so far outside of our expectations, the framework that we as a family dealt with. This may have been something which was becoming normal in the Netherlands. But for our family, it was not even nearly an acceptable option in life. It’s totally outside of the framework of everything we believe communally. And we’re a very close-knit family.”

While the Reitsema family’s story illustrates the human tragedy and abuse that euthanasia and assisted suicide have rained upon the Netherlands, it also speaks to Americans. In 1996, the United States Supreme Court, while denying that assisted suicide fell into the ever-expanding category of constitutional rights, effectively sent the issue to the individual states for “experimentation.”

As a result, over 40 individuals have already died through a secretive, state-sanctioned assisted suicide program in Oregon. Michigan voters, by contrast, roundly rejected assisted suicide in a 1998 referendum. A small cadre of California legislators plan to introduce an assisted suicide measure in January 2001. In November, Maine voters narrowly rejected a misnomered “death with dignity” measure.

As the Reitsema family’s story shows, reality tends to rust the rhetorical glitter of “death with dignity.”

Family discovered euthanasia too late
Henk Reitsema’s grandfather had received a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a disease that would have naturally taken his life within a few years. At the same time, however, he also had developed a painful thrombosis in his leg, so he asked the attending physician at the nursing home for help with the pain.

Instead, the nursing home physician quietly ordered nurses to administer overdoses of morphine while withholding food and water. Rather than providing healing or comfort, and without consulting Grandfather Reitsema or his loved ones, this doctor aimed to kill.

Henk’s soft-spoken wife, Riana, had been regularly visiting Grandfather Reitsema at the time. She relates that one of Henk’s aunts who was also visiting suddenly stumbled upon the plan—but too late.

“The day before he died, she tried to give him water and the nurse came in. And the nurse said, ‘Don’t give him water.’ They asked her, ‘Why not give him water? That’s one thing that he can drink if he doesn’t want to have food, out of his own choice.’

“But the nurse said, ‘No, you’re not allowed to give anything to drink.’”

Horrified, the family realized the nursing home was actually euthanizing Grandfather Reitsema. Henk explains, “My family tried to reverse it, but he died from pneumonia.” (Pneumonia can follow heavy morphine dosing, as the lungs fill with fluid because the drug suppresses the muscular action needed to cough up phlegm.)

Suspicions of family members arise
Shocked by the killing, some family members released their rage by accusing other family members of complicity in the medical murder. Like most Dutch, they naively believed that euthanasia is always a matter of consent.

“This was initially the most terrible part of this,” Henk recalls. “Everybody in the family was suspecting the other for having given permission for the euthanasia. And it led to a huge family fight, one of the most painful things that the family as a whole had ever experienced.

“Instead of being able to mourn together in the first place,” Henk laments, “they were first having a slinging match as to who would have given permission. Because nobody believed that it could be possible that a doctor could make a decision like this single-handedly. They were just not believing it possible that someone who’s an official in a normal kind of institution would play lord over life and death.”

Dutch politicians and health officials are careful to emphasize a system of controls designed to insure patient autonomy. In practice, however, those controls function as a fairy tale. Dutch medical surveys reveal that in three out of four cases where doctors intervened to hasten death, the patient did not give permission (see sidebar).

“After a while of talking to each other and getting the emotions calmed down,” Henk explains, “everybody realized that not even my grandmother had as much as given an insinuation that it was okay. One never would have imagined him not wanting to hold on to life. He liked living much too much, and was also a religious man who respected the fact that God had given him life.”

No remorse, no recourse
One day outside the nursing home, Henk’s aunt waited for the physician who had killed her brother.

“She confronted him with the fact that he killed our grandfather,” Henk recalls. “His response was, ‘But he was sick! Don’t you understand, don’t you get it? I was just helping him out.’”

Henk points to that conversation as an illustration of the philosophical chasm between the Christian view of the intrinsic, sacred value of human life and a utilitarian secular view.

“There was something very unreal about the doctor who euthanized my grandfather and his perception of what life meant,” Henk explains. “The framework is radically different. And the whole connectedness with other people was totally absent from his mind. The doctor thinks, ‘This guy’s life isn’t worth anything, his standard of life isn’t worth living, so let’s just save them all the effort.’ It’s a very mechanical mode of thinking.”

Having pieced together the chain of events that led to Grandfather Reitsema’s death, the family considered legal action against the doctor.

“They wanted to press charges against him,” Henk explains, “and collected some of the data for that. But it proved to be a no-win situation. Only the most extremely harsh cases ever come to court, and even then, the approach of the court is always extremely lenient. It’s always in favor of the doctors: ‘Maybe a judgment error, but they work so hard.’

Media uncover systematic “bed-clearing”
Not long after the incident with Henk’s grandfather, Dutch media began to uncover the tragedy at the nursing home.

Henk recalls, “The newspaper reported that they practiced ‘bed-rooming,’--making space in the beds from time to time--by putting in what the Dutch call versterving. It’s a sort of humanistic Dutch word for letting somebody starve. It’s an official term, a euphemistic term. It’s one that makes active killing of people sound like a treatment.

“When they needed beds for new patients, they would ‘clean out’ some beds. Make a checklist, and in a week, ten people would die. The records showed that this kind of administrative pressure had started to play a role in the diagnosis of the doctors. These are internal physicians, physicians who work full-time on the staff in an old-people’s home. They become little lords over life and death.”

Absolute power corrupts
Once trusted to “do no harm” as stated in the Hippocratic oath, a Dutch medical autocracy now kills with impunity. Euthanasia and assisted suicide, originally promoted by Dutch physicians, has yielded staggering power to physicians while placing them above the law.

Instead of giving patients the ultimate in self-determination, the Dutch dance with death has proven to be the fastest way for patients to lose autonomy. Now, thousands of wary Dutch citizens have resorted to carrying documents stressing that they do not want euthanasia.

Unlike the impressive polders keeping the sea from flooding the country, euthanasia regulations have proven to be more of a breach than a barrier. Thousands of patients have drowned in a flood of exceptions and abuses. On October 30, 2000, for example, a Dutch court on Monday acquitted a doctor who provided suicide for a depressed patient who was not even physically suffering—a clear flouting of the regulations.

Rather than serving as a watchdog to protect its citizens, the Dutch government instead functions as an aggressive advocate and promoter of euthanasia. Government bureaucrats long ago staked their political reputations on state-sanctioned death and are unlikely to own up to their fatal error and now reverse course.

The Dutch have now moved to officially legalize euthanasia, just as they have legalized drug use and prostitution, employing the fatally flawed notion that legalization will somehow curb abuses. Government officials recently proposed to extend euthanasia to 12-year-olds, even without their parents’ consent.

Will Americans import the Dutch debacle?
Like their Dutch counterparts, American suicide activists spread their propaganda with stories and images of patients suffering without adequate pain control. They realize that if the debate remains framed in these terms, many Americans—especially younger ones—will approve of assisted suicide. However, the tide tends to turn when the public learns the full truth about the abuses of assisted suicide and compassionate alternatives of hospice and palliative care.

In Oregon. state bureaucrats for the past two years have trotted out statistics apparently designed to bolster public faith in their new assisted suicide system. Across the nation, independent surveys are revealing thousands of human and institutional errors in patient care every year. Yet Oregon’s scrubbed-clean assisted suicide reports have offered not a trace of the problems one would naturally expect in the state’s first foray into institutionalized suicide.

Why? Because the law actually requires the government to shield the details of assisted suicides from any public access. As a result, the real truth behind the propaganda can easily remain a well-kept secret.

In spite of the blocking of public access to the truth, some of the sludge suppressed in the official reports has begun to ooze out. Stories have surfaced, for example, of suicide slipping into suspected homicide. Evidence of such a crime is hard to come by; in one instance in Oregon, a family member suspected of murder had the supposed suicide victim cremated within 24 hours of death.

An Oregon suicide advocate was taped in an unguarded moment revealing a botched assisted suicide in Oregon. The event landed its suffering victim in the emergency room and eventually in a nursing home. Yet because of the secrecy clause in Oregon’s assisted suicide law, none of these inconvenient details showed up in the sterile statistical annual report.

The potential for abuses like these led Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader to take a political risk and attack Oregon’s assisted suicide scheme while campaigning in the state. Nader observed that the Oregon law is especially dangerous for patients prone to worry about being a financial burden to relatives. "Then along come doctors working for HMOs who are under pressure to cut costs, and the deed is done," he said.[i]

Maine Slips Out of Suicide Noose
In Maine, suicide activists had expected the state’s traditionally independent and often liberal voters to import Oregon’s secret suicide program by way of a “Death with Dignity” initiative. The November 2000 ballot measure included the carefully crafted statement, “Should a terminally ill adult who is of sound mind be allowed to ask for and receive a doctor's help to die?" Thanks to an education campaign by state pro-life groups, churches and the Christian Medical Association, Maine voters canned the suicide scheme.

Nationally, vice president Al Gore had waffled on assisted suicide, attempting to frame the issue in the same way abortion is often framed—as a personal matter between patient and doctor. On June 15, Gore said that "when a family member is in extremis at the very end of life, and there is a lot of pain, there is no quality of life and there are very subtle judgments that have to be made... common sense dictates that ought to be left to the family in consultation with the physician." [ii]

In contrast, Texas Governor George W. Bush had gone on record opposing assisted suicide and the principles of the Pain Relief Promotion Act. That legislation will fund training in pain management and prevent physicians from using federally regulated narcotics in physician-assisted suicides. The House of Representatives has passed the Act, and Senate passage appears promising.

“First of all, in principle, I'm against physician-assisted suicide,” Bush explained. “And secondly, I believe it is the prerogative of the federal government to control drug rules. And the idea of using a controlled substance to end somebody's life is something I don't agree with." [iii] Bush sums up his position by saying he believes “the role of a doctor is to relieve pain and suffering, not to end life.” [iv]

Shaping a culture of life
In pre-war Nazi Germany, physicians’ collaboration with Hitler in euthanasia initiatives paved the way for the Holocaust. History sadly records how philosophers and physicians helped convince the public that killing the handicapped, retarded children, and the mentally ill by euthanasia was actually a deed of compassion.

American pro-life pioneer and euthanasia expert Dr. J.C. Wilke aptly notes, “History can repeat. Today we are living, once again, in the midst of a ‘culture of death.’” [v]

As assisted suicide activists take their lethal campaign state by state, will Americans embrace life or slide down the slippery slope toward death? The answer depends in significant measure upon Christians proclaiming the truth and demonstrating compassionate alternatives such as hospice, palliative care and persevering love. Above all, each believer can help meet the deepest need of suffering patients, which is to know the One who makes life worth living.

Endnotes
[i] “Nader attacks Oregon assisted-suicide law,” Associated Press news report, August 26, 2000.

[ii] posted on MSNBC website June 15, 2000, reported by National Right to Life News at http://www.nrlc.org/news/2000/NRL07/back.html.

[iii] Portland Oregonian, May 17, 2000.

[iv] from official Bush campaign web site at http://www.georgewbush.com/issues/lifeissues.html

[v] Wilke, J.C., et al, Assisted Suicide & Euthanasia (Cincinnati: Hayes Publishing Co., Inc., 1998), p. i.

[vi] van der Maas PJ, van der Wal G, Haverkate I, et al. Euthanasia physician-assisted suicide and other medical practices involving the end of life in the Netherlands 1990-1995. N Engl J Med 1996;335:1699–1705. http://www.nejm.org/content/1996/0335/0022/1699.asp

Continent Death: Euthanasia in Europe
by Wesley J. Smith

Editor's Note: Wesley Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder.

Too many people think with their hearts instead of their brains. Wanting the world to suit their desires, when faced with hard truths to the contrary, they refuse to face facts they don’t want to believe. This common human failing has a name: self-delusion.

Self-delusion is rampant in the euthanasia movement. Most proponents recognize that it is inherently dangerous to legalize killing. But they desperately want to believe that they can control the grim reaper. Thus, they continue to peddle the nonsense that "guidelines will protect against abuse" despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.

Euthanasia has been around long enough and practiced sufficiently enough for us to detect a pattern. Killing is sold to the public as a last resort justified only in cases where nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. But once the reaper is allowed through the door, the categories of killable people expand steadily toward the acceptance of death on demand.

The classic example is the Netherlands, where doctors have been allowed to euthanize patients since 1973. Dutch death regulations require that euthanasia be strictly limited to the sickest patients, for whom nothing but extermination will alleviate overwhelming suffering — a concept in Dutch law known as force majeur. But once mercy killing was redefined as being good in a few cases rather than being bad in all circumstances, it didn’t take long for the protective guidelines to be viewed widely as impediments to be overcome instead of important protections to be obeyed.

Thus, supposedly ironclad protections against abuse — such as the doctrine of force mejeur and the stipulation that patient give multiple requests for euthanasia — quickly ceased meaningfully to constrain mercy killing. As a consequence, Dutch doctors now legally kill terminally ill people who ask for it, chronically ill people who ask for it, disabled people who ask for it, and depressed people who ask for it.

Euthanasia has also entered the pediatric wards, where eugenic infanticide has become common even though babies cannot ask to be killed. According to a 1997 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, approximately 8 percent of all Dutch infant deaths result from lethal injections. The babies deemed killable are often disabled and thus are thought not to have a "livable life." The practice has become so common that 45 percent of neonatologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to Lancet surveys had killed babies.

It gets worse: Repeated studies sponsored by the Dutch government have found that doctors kill approximately 1,000 patients each year who have not asked for euthanasia. This is not only a violation of every guideline, but an act that Dutch law considers murder. Nonvoluntary euthanasia has become so common that it even has a name: "Termination without request or consent."

Despite this carnage, Dutch doctors are very rarely prosecuted for such crimes, and the few that are brought to court are usually exonerated. Moreover, even if a doctor is found guilty, he or she is almost never punished in any meaningful way, nor does the murderer face discipline by the Dutch Medical Society. For example, in 2001, a doctor was convicted of murdering an 84-year-old patient who had not asked to be killed. Prosecutors demanded a nine-month suspended probation (!), yet even this brush — it can’t even be called a slap — on the wrist was rejected by the trial judge who refused to impose any punishment. Not to worry. The appellate court decided to get tough: It imposed a one-week suspended sentence on the doctor for murder.

Even such praising with faint damnation isn’t enough for the Dutch Medical Association. As a result of this and the handful of other non-punished murder convictions of doctors who engaged in termination without request or consent, the organization is lobbying to legalize non-voluntary euthanasia. Along these same lines — and demonstrating that the culture of death recognizes no limits — the day after the Dutch formally legalized euthanasia, the country’s minister of health advocated the provision of suicide pills to the elderly who do not qualify for killing under Dutch law.

Lest we think the Dutch experience is a fluke, let us now turn our attention to Belgium. Only one year ago the Belgians legalized Dutch-style euthanasia under "strict" guidelines. As with the Netherlands, once unfettered, the euthanasia culture quickly began to swallow Belgium whole. Moreover, the slide down the slope has occurred at a greatly accelerated pace. It took decades for the Dutch euthanasia to reach the current morass. But Belgian euthanasia went off the rails from day one: The very first reported killing — that of a man with multiple sclerosis — violated the legal guidelines (not that anything was done about it). Moreover, while 203 people were officially recognized as having been euthanized in Belgium during the first year of legal practice, most euthanasia deaths were not reported (a violation of the law). The actual toll is probably closer to 1,000.

And Belgian euthanasia advocates have already begun agitating to expand the categories of killable people. A just-completed forum attended by hundreds of Belgian doctors and euthanasia enthusiasts advocated that minors be allowed to request euthanasia, as well as people with degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, who are not imminently dying. Not only that, but the chairman of the conference wants to force doctors to participate in killing patients, even if they are morally opposed. If he gets his way, the law will soon require doctors who oppose euthanasia to refer patients who want to be killed to a colleague willing to do the deed. So much for choice.

The Swiss have also unleashed the culture of death into their midst. Rather than authorizing doctors to commit euthanasia, however, Swiss law instead permits private suicide facilitation. As a result, Switzerland has become a destination for "suicide tourists" who travel there not to ski, but to receive a poison cocktail.

A private group that goes by the name "Dignitas" facilitates most Swiss assisted suicides. Its founder, lawyer Ludwig Minelli, recently told the Swiss press that he will not restrict Dignitas’s dark work to providing services to the dying. Indeed, the report said Minelli believes that "severe depression can be irreversible and that he is justified" in helping "the mentally ill" to die. Along these lines, a Swiss doctor is being investigated for possible prosecution for the double suicide of French twins with schizophrenia. That may sound like a serious effort to crack down on abuse, but remember, once euthanasia is legitimized, such talk is often cheap. If the Dutch experience is any indication, even if the suicide doctor is convicted, he will not be meaningfully punished.

Despite this history, euthanasia advocates here and abroad still cling irrationally to the hubristic and foolish notion that they are competent to administer death. They remind one of Dr. Frankenstein, who, in the name of benefiting humankind, unleashed a terrible monster.

Leading Euthanasia Advocate Expands Horizons

By Patrick Goodenough
Source: CNSNews.com July 30, 2003

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - A controversial Australian euthanasia advocate has set up a branch of his pressure group in neighboring New Zealand, just a day before lawmakers in that country debate legislation that would legalize assisted suicide.

The New Zealand branch is being headed by former nurse Lesley Martin, who is facing trial for attempting to kill her terminally-ill mother.

She said Wednesday it would offer a "more strident" alternative to existing, conservative, voluntary euthanasia groups.

Martin spent the day lobbying lawmakers in Wellington, hours before they were to consider the Death with Dignity Bill.

The bill, initiated by a private member rather than the government, aims to legalize euthanasia in cases where an adult applicant has obtained two independent medical opinions, had professional counseling, and gone through a mandatory waiting period.

The last time the New Zealand parliament debated a law to legalize euthanasia, in 1995, the move was heavily defeated by 61 votes to 29.

Three years later, Martin tried to help her mother, who was dying of cancer, to end her life. She subsequently published a book entitled "To Die Like a Dog," in which she admitted giving the 68-year-old an overdose of morphine.

Last March, she was arrested and charged with attempted murder.

On the same day as she was indicted, lawmaker Peter Brown's Death with Dignity Bill - a very similar bill to the one thrown out in 1995 - was drawn in a ballot.

It was to be debated on Wednesday, and lawmakers will have a conscience vote on whether to refer the bill to a select committee for full consideration.

Martin said by phone from Wellington she was optimistic the legislation would succeed this time.

The bill contains a requirement for a national referendum, which would be held at the same time as the next general election.

If the bill does pass, and a referendum is held, Martin predicted the measure would pass easily. She noted that opinion polls consistently show that 70-75 per cent of New Zealanders would support legalizing euthanasia.

Martin is to head up the New Zealand branch of a euthanasia lobby group called Exit Australia, whose driving force, Dr. Philip Nitschke, holds workshops in his country, advising people on how to kill themselves.

Nicknamed "Australia's Dr. Death," Nitschke has designed several devices aimed at facilitating suicide, including modified plastic bags for suffocation, and a carbon monoxide death-by-gassing machine.

In the 1990s, an earlier device he designed helped four patients die under a short-lived euthanasia law in Australia's Northern Territory.

The law was subsequently overturned by the federal government, and Nitschke has been campaigning hard since then for euthanasia to be made legal in Australia.

In a statement this week he suggested that New Zealand may take the leap before Australia does.

"It has become increasingly clear to me that the speed with which the cause of voluntary euthanasia has taken root in that country [New Zealand] requires greater attention from us in Australia," he said.

"Once again, we [Australians] look likely to trail New Zealand on an issue of social progress and development," he said.

Nitschke held a series of workshops in New Zealand earlier this year, and already New Zealanders comprise about 10 per cent of the overall membership of Exit Australia.

Martin said Wednesday those people would now become the core members of Exit New Zealand, and others were joining all the time.

She promised that the organization would be "more pro-active" than existing voluntary euthanasia societies, which she implied were ineffectual.

"What we doing is reassuring the New Zealand public that there will now exist a much more proactive group in favor of euthanasia legislation. We have two societies that have existed for 25 years, but they have been largely conservative."

Exit would use "more creative" ideas to promote euthanasia and "sell the idea to the mainstream public," she said, but declined to elaborate.

Martin said euthanasia was clearly happening anyway despite current laws, but the proposed bill would mean people would no longer have to take the law into their own hands.

"This legislation brings together those doctors who are already performing euthanasia for their patients, together with a group of people who would make use of this legislation," she said. "At the moment there's no open and honest way these two groups of people can connect."

She described the Death with Dignity Bill as "the most significant piece of legislation to affect New Zealand society in the history of parliament here."

And if it fails, Martin said, "we're just going to keep getting louder and noisier about this - this is an issue that just simply doesn't go away."

Weighing 'rights'

Opponents of the euthanasia bill include pro-life campaigners, religious groups and the New Zealand Medical Association.

A national body representing hospices - institutions that provide palliative care to the terminally-ill - has also come out against the bill.

Instead of giving people the "right" to die on demand, Hospice New Zealand spokeswoman Jamie Seymour said, the authorities should ensure that every dying patient had the right to the best medical care available - usually hospice palliative care.

"If this were the case, there would be far fewer requests for euthanasia in New Zealand," she said.

New Zealand's Attorney General Margaret Wilson argued last month that the bill would breach the country's Bill of Rights Act because it was "inconsistent with the right not to be deprived of life."

An informal newspaper survey of lawmakers showed around 37 members of parliament (MPs) voicing support for it and 33 saying they would vote against it. That leaves another 50 or so MPs who were either undecided or who did not respond.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has voiced cautious support for the bill, while the leader of the official opposition National Party, Bill English, is against it.

MPs have been given a conscience vote, meaning they will not have to vote along party lines.

With many lawmakers still to make up their minds, lobbying has intensified.

MPs were also due to hear from a leading American anti-euthanasia campaigner, Brian Johnston, author of a 1997 book called "Death as a Salesman: What's Wrong With Assisted Suicide."

Euthanasia and/or assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and the state of Oregon

South Australian Euthanasia Bill Defeated

Roslyn Phillips

Federation of Light

South Australia

The so-called Dignity in Dying Bill to legalise euthanasia was soundly defeated in the South Australian Legislative Council at 6 pm tonight, Wednesday 2 June 2004- 13 votes to 8.

The debate came on unexpectedly early, so there were only three people in the public gallery to watch the momentous event - David d'Lima, his son Jeremy, and I. We silently cheered and praised God. Even Sandra Kanck's pro-death people didn't make it in time.

Andrew Evans from Family First, who has led the opposition to the bill, gave an excellent speech pointing out the latest statistics from the Netherlands - showing that where voluntary euthanasia is legalised, involuntary euthanasia becomes much more acceptable.

Other MPs made briefer speeches. Ian Gilfillan, even though he is an Australian Democrat, said he could not support the bill because it would put vulnerable people at greater risk. Michelle Lensink said she would not support it because of her concerns about abuse of the elderly.

John Dawkins and David Ridgeway were the only Liberals to support the bill. Carmel Zollo and Paul Holloway were the only ALP members to vote against it.