August 11, 2015 (NationalReview) — The Journal of the American Medical Association has conducted a study on euthanasia in the Netherlands and Belgium. It makes for morbid reading. The culture of death is really up and running!
For this post, I want to focus on the practice in the Netherlands of what I call “doctor shopping.”
By that I mean when one’s own doctor won’t do the deed, contact a pro-suicide/euthanasia organization for a referral to a death doctor who probably will.
In the Netherlands, that organization is called End-of-Life Clinic, where suicidal people can go to be made dead if their own doctor refuses. It has a lot of blood on its hands. From, “Euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands on a Slippery Slope?”
Snijdewind et al report data from the End-of-Life Clinic, an organization established in the Netherlands in 2012 to consider euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide requests from patients whose primary physicians turned down a request or declined to participate. Although not legal, speeding of death is tolerated in the Netherlands for patients with unbearable conditions, without prospect of relief. The End-of-Life Clinic is thus a second opinion for patients who claim this status and who seek aid in dying.
In total, 645 people applied to the clinic during a 1-year period. Physicians approved 162 requests (25.1%), rejected 300 (46.5%), and reached no decision in the remaining cases.’
Some of the rationales given are reassuring. For example, requests characterized by psychological as opposed to physical suffering were more likely to be rejected, as were requests by individuals who lived alone. Thus, fears were mitigated that solitary, depressed individuals with potentially reversible conditions might successfully end their lives.
Mitigated? Please. End-of-Life Clinic has facilitated the euthanasia killings of depressed elders “tired of life” as well as the mentally ill.
And remember, the above numbers represent patients previously rejected by their own primary care or other physician. So the toll doesn’t take the “low hanging fruit” being killed by their own doctors into account.
Doctor shopping happens in Oregon too. The organization is called Compassion and Choices, which is involved with many assisted suicides in that state–including referrals to death doctors when a patient’s own doctor refuses to lethally prescribe.
These aren’t slippery slope discussions. They are facts on the ground discussions.
#deathondemand
Reprinted with permission from National Review.