Thread: Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

By TOBY STERLING

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.



11/30/04 17:54

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...=20010410NY190

Well... I'm sure it'll be the UNPOPULAR opinion here... but I feel if the child is terminal and the PARENTS have ok'd it... then it's not my right to judge.

while working with hospice patients now for the last several months, i can understand why some patients/ families would choose this route if given the option. i've seen these patients suffer immensly, i really didn't know suffering before this job. one of my patients a few weekends ago, well........i went to see her on a saturday and she is lying in bed with many family and friends around, she is struggling for every breath and they are bickering back and forth over her bedside about feed her this, don't give her that, and so on and so forth......and i commence to doing my job, that is taking her vital signs and checking her from head to toe for everything from bedsores to bowel obstruction. well, at one point i have to move her on her side to get a look at her bottom at a bedsore and this is very painful for her....meanwhile all of these family members are getting on her nerves too. well anyways, the next day i go back because death is immenent for her and when i enter her room, i could tell right away that she had seriously declined overnight. she see's me and says, "oh God, not you again" but it was mumbled and slurred but i clearly understood what she meant (she said this due to having to be moved around and messed with and it was painful for her) although i didn't move her this time.......i just gently took her vital signs and listened to her heart and abdomen and looked at what i could see over the covers. anyway the main point i'm trying to get at is what she said after "oh, god, not you again" , next she said, "you mean i'm not dead yet, pleeeeease let me die" and tears rolled down her cheek. i got on the phone with her doctor and ordered her some morphine........she carried on 2 more days.....then died. this scenario has played out several times in my few short months there. some people in that much pain, wearing diapers, not eating/drinking, KNOWING there is NO HOPE, bedsore abounding, struggling for every breath, I am seriously reconsidering my own views on this subject. the ONLY problem i personally would have with it would be the "playing God" and the religious stance on taking a life. but if there is absolutely no quality of life, nothing but pain/despair? its a tough thing.

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.

This is the part I have a problem with ...

It is a slippery slope when you start letting people deceide who has suffient "quality of life" to be allowed to live.

If a person is able to request "mercy" that is one thing, for others not even family is another.

Originally Posted by Jolie Rouge

This is the part I have a problem with ...

It is a slippery slope when you start letting people deceide who has suffient "quality of life" to be allowed to live.

If a person is able to request "mercy" that is one thing, for others not even family is another.

i wouldn't agree with euthansia of mentally ill people, kind of reminds me of how Hitler started his extermination plan.....that is plain wrong. they are not in constant physical pain with no hope for recovery. i would think that the only time it should ever be considered ( and that would be if I ever could get over the religous issue) is if there is constant physical pain without hope of recovery, not people who are an inconvience to take care of like those who are severally mentally ill or elderly folks.

Originally Posted by Njean31

i wouldn't agree with euthansia of mentally ill people, kind of reminds me of how Hitler started his extermination plan.....that is plain wrong. they are not in constant physical pain with no hope for recovery. i would think that the only time it should ever be considered ( and that would be if I ever could get over the religous issue) is if there is constant physical pain without hope of recovery, not people who are an inconvience to take care of like those who are severally mentally ill or elderly folks.

ita! this is awful. it is just one step forward to "pick and choose"

But I certainly don't think that's the point that sentence was making. The Dutch are working on this protocol for people who have no free will and who are terminally ill; the article mentioned severely mentally retarded peope because many of those people would not be able to express their will in a case where they were also terminally ill and in great pain. It isn't an either/or scenario, but a both case - they would have to meet both of the criteria, be both terminally il and in a coma, terminally ill and severely mentally retarded, terminally ill and an infant, etc. I still understand if someone is against euthenasia, but I did want to clarify that.

...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.

This article clarifies a few questions that I had ....


Dutch ponder 'mercy killing' rules
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 Posted: 7:23 PM EST (0023 GMT)

(CNN) -- Dutch health officials are considering guidelines doctors could follow for euthanizing terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and patients in irreversible comas.

Netherlands was the first country to legalize euthanasia -- ending the life of someone suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, with their approval.

In recent years there also have been reports of mercy killings of terminally ill babies, and officials at one hospital say a number have been carried out there.

The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has asked the Netherlands Ministry of Health to create an independent board to evaluate euthanasia cases for each category of people "with no free will."

Doctors now follow legal standards regarding euthanasia, or assisted suicide, for patients who are able to make such a decision on their own.

Under the rules established by KNMG and the Dutch courts, the patient's decision must be freely made, well-considered and persistent; there must be unbearable suffering; and the attending physician should consult with a colleague.

There are no official guidelines for ending the lives of those who are unable to make their own decision, such as in the case of a baby, but Groningen Academic Hospital has conducted such procedures under its own, internal guidelines.

Dr. Eduard Verhagen, clinical director of the hospital's pediatric clinic, told NPR in an interview that the babies who had been euthanized were born with incurable conditions that were so serious "(we) felt that the most humane course would be to allow the child to die and even actively assist them with their death."

"They are very rare cases of extreme suffering. In these cases, the diagnosis was extreme spina bifada."

That disorder is marked by incomplete development of the brain, spinal cord and/or their protective coverings.

Because the procedure was not legal, Verhagen said, the hospital preferred that cases be assessed by a committee of experts. The Dutch parliament legalized euthanasia for adults in 2002.

"What we would like to happen here in Holland is that we put the spotlight on these decisions because they need to be extremely secure, and instead of taking these positions in a kind of gray area, we want them to be in the spotlight," the doctor said.

Eric Van Yijlick, project manager for SCEN (Support and Consultation on Euthanasia in the Netherlands), said the Groningen cases involving newborns should be referred to as "life ending without request" rather than euthanasia, because that term indicates the dying party has requested the procedure.

Van Yijlick said that to his knowledge, the killing of newborns is not common -- just a few cases yearly. No official statistics exist on terminally ill children's lives being terminated, he said.

New York Medical Producer Chris Gajilan contributed to this report.


http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/12/01...ill/index.html


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I will give this much -- the way they 'euthanise" is certainly more humane that what happens here in the US. One of the objections I have in that FL woman's case is that they will simply cut off all food and water and allow her to starve to death. If you did that to a sick dog you would be put in jail for cruelty to an animal ! At least the Dutch will give them an overdose of a sedative to ease them from life.

Dutch told of child euthanasia

The report authors want to encourage reporting of child euthanasia cases
Dutch doctors have reported 22 mercy killings of terminally ill babies since 1997, according to a new study. None of the doctors involved were charged, although euthanasia for children is illegal in the Netherlands. The report, in the Dutch Journal of Medicine, is the first detailed examination of child euthanasia.

The study's authors want to address under-reporting of the practice and encourage doctors to report cases without fear of prosecution. The cases involved babies with extreme spina bifida, a disabling birth defect.

The study showed that prosecutors had decided not to file charges as long as four unofficial rules were met:

the child's medical team and independent doctors must agree
there is no prospect of improvement and the pain cannot be eased
parents give their consent
the life must be ended in the correct medical way

A survey has suggested Dutch doctors end the lives of about 15 to 20 disabled newborns a year but most go unreported. "The babies are there but we were never allowed to talk about them," said paediatrician Eduard Verhagen, of Groningen University Medical Centre, and one of the authors of the study. "That must change. If we take this awfully difficult decision, it must happen with complete openness," he told De Volkskrant newspaper. "You are trained to save the life of a child but with these children the suffering can only be stopped by ending their lives. It takes courage to do that."

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalise euthanasia but doctors must follow strict rules. The Vatican has criticised the Netherlands over its legalisation of euthanasia.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4198993.stm