Suffering through Living? Avoid the Netherlands

Weblog over at Christianity Today has a chilling story on the whacked out progress of euthanasia in the Netherlands. Besides the mere expected monumental abuses, like euthanizing infants, the Dutch have also decided that:

"Doctors can help patients who ask for help to die even though they may not be ill but 'suffering through living,' concludes a three year inquiry commissioned by the Royal Dutch Medical Association," the British Medical Journal reports today.


The report comes a year after physician Philip Sutorius had his criminal conviction appeal rejected by the Dutch Supreme Court. In 1998 Sutorius performed an "assisted suicide" on politician Edward Brongersma, who had no major disease other than feeling his existence was "pointless and empty." Being "tired of life" is no grounds for death, Dutch courts said, but Sutorius was not punished since he showed "concern for his patient."


The current situation, then, is murky. The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that patients must have a "classifiable physical or mental condition" to be killed, but the country's euthanasia law only says the person must be "suffering hopelessly and unbearably."


Jos Dijkhuis, who led the Royal Dutch Medical Association inquiry, says patients merely "tired of life" shouldn't be granted physician-assisted suicide, but that doctors alone should be allowed to decide whether patients' "suffering through living" is severe enough for death.

As Weblog wittily notes: Slippery-slope arguments are often faulty, but the Royal Dutch Medical Association seems to be going out of its way to demonstrate that such slopes really do exist.

What will pose a particular morbid fascination for the Style Editor is to see how this all goes down in this era of separate realities/truths. Having lost any belief in or adherence to an absolute truth, the case will soon arise when a doctor sees a patient as “suffering through living” but the patient doesn’t.

Well, such would have been interesting case if the Dutch Supreme Court were a court of law rather than a court of feeling. After all I’m sure the murdering doctor will have shown “concern” for the patient, if only in the witness box, which seems to be the only factor about which the Dutch Supreme Court really cares. Yes indeed, if you care that what ever you do must be good, because the heart of course can never lie. Strewth. And people thought the Twinkie defense was an all time low in defense strategies.

I counsel all Dr. Curmudgeon readers who happen to be visiting the Netherlands to cast off their usual curmudgeonly aspect and to appear downright jovial lest someone decide you're suffering through living.

But before we become too cocky about the Dutch, 80% of the people in Vermont think euthanasia is just peachy too.