Mobile euthanasia teams in the Netherlands - update.

Last year the Netherlands euthanasia lobby (NVVE) decided to establish Mobile euthanasia teams in order to euthanize people with dementia and people with disabilities, who doctors sometimes hesitate to euthanize. Not Dead Yet reported on this decision last November on their blog.

Wesley Smith has now reported that the NVVE is moving forward on their plan to establish six mobile euthanasia teams. It is anticipated that the NVVE will begin mobile killing on March 1, 2012.

Wesley Smith

Smith stated on his blog:

One of the supposed protections of euthanasia is the doctor saying no when, as one example, when killing isn’t warranted.  (Doctors also say know if participating in killing of a patient is against conscience, of course). Ditto assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington.

But that has always been a false premise. If a patient’s own doctor says no, just go death doctor shopping.  If you go to an assisted suicide/euthanasia advocacy group for a referral, chances are you will get your death wish granted.

And now, in the Netherlands, mobile euthanasia clinics! Link to the original story from Radio Netherlands.

De Volkskrant and Trouw report on a new development in euthanasia practice. De Volkskrant reports that, beginning in March, people who have been refused euthanasia by their own doctor will be able to call in one of six travelling teams. The groups, consisting of a doctor and a nurse, will be based in The Hague but will deal with cases throughout the country. The legal criteria that the patient must be in a situation of unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement will still apply. 

Trouw reports that the association behind the plan, Right to Die NL, is “doing everything it can” to allay fears and objections. One such fear is that dedicated teams will develop a kind of tunnel vision and will focus too strongly on meeting the patient’s desire for euthanasia at the expense of other options. But the association tells the paper “It can just as easily turn out that the patient’s doctor was right to refuse euthanasia. It won’t be a case of ‘your wish is our command’.”

I don’t believe that for a second, but if the death wish is not a command, why not?  If someone wants to be made dead, who are these mobile euthanasia purvayors to say no?  Fear not, they mostly won’t.  They are running mobile homicide clinics for a reason.

I stated was reported to have stated to a media outlet:

“The mobile euthanasia teams are a direct effort to eliminate the lives of people with disabilities,” 

 “This is also a specific form of elder abuse because frail, elderly people who are unable to request euthanasia will be dying by euthanasia through these mobile teams.”

The Mobile Euthanasia teams are a direct outcome of a society that allows one citizen to kill other citizens. Once a society opens the door to allowing its citizens to have the right to cause the death of another citizen, then the only question is - what reasons will permit the killing. There are no surprises here. Killing is killing is killing, whether it be done to a terminally ill person, or a person with a disability or a person with dementia. 

Choice and autonomy are the slogans, but in the end, these slogans are meaningless, because it becomes once it is acceptable to kill for one reason, soon their are many reasons to kill.

The current political push for the NVVE is the "tired of living" campaign. The NVVE have decided that 70 year old people, who are otherwise healthy, should be able to be given a lethal dose, simply because they are "tired of living". 

Have they not thought that people with depression are often difficult to diagnose?