This article appeared in the October 16 issue of The Mercury, the main newspaper in Hobart, Tasmania. This article was a companion piece to an article in favour of legalisation of euthanasia by Emeritus Professor Colin Wendell-Smith, convenor of Doctors for Dying with Dignity.
By Michael Cook, The Mercury - October 16, 2013
LET'S take a look at Belgium.
As Tasmanian MPs ponder legalising voluntary euthanasia as a remedy for unbearable suffering, they should take a close look at the situation in Belgium, where it has been legal since 2002.
For starters, their colleagues in Brussels are currently pondering whether to legalise euthanasia for children. Are Belgian five-year-olds really capable of voluntarily choosing to die?
The Belgian MPs are also studying whether to authorise euthanasia for patients with dementia who have written advance directives, even if they appear to be cheerful and content with their impaired life.
Is that really voluntary?
The history of euthanasia in Belgium is one of unremitting bracket creep.
What began with euthanasia only for constant, unbearable, untreatable suffering and only for consenting adults keeps expanding and expanding with consequences that no one could envisage.
(1) Euthanasia for organ donation.
Donors who died voluntarily now account for one in eight lung transplants from deceased donors in Belgium.
The most valuable donors are those with diseases like motor neurone disease because their hearts and lungs are healthy.
A doctor gives them a lethal injection in one room and they are wheeled into another where surgeons take their organs.
The physicist Stephen Hawking also has motor neurone disease. People with this condition deserve compassion, affection and support, not to have their organs plundered.
(2) Euthanasia for prisoners.
The first case took place last year. All of the conditions had been carefully fulfilled: the prisoner had a terminal illness, he had made repeated requests for death, and three doctors had signed off on the request.
More prisoners have applied to follow his example.
Australia's best-known euthanasia activist, Dr Philip Nitschke, has described euthanasia as the "last frontier in prison reform". But is this the way to fix problems at Risdon?
(3) Euthanasia as a substitute for adequate welfare services.
A recent judgment by the European Committee on Social Rights found that Belgium's inadequate provision of care and accommodation for highly dependent disabled people amounted to a violation of human rights.
It's not surprising, given what happened to Mark and Eddy Verbessem late last year.
They were deaf 45-year-old identical twins. When they discovered that they were going blind, they applied for euthanasia. They were not terminally ill or in pain. They simply did not have adequate family and social support.
(4) Euthanasia to cover doctors' mistakes.
A transsexual was recently given euthanasia because doctors had botched his sex reassignment. Nathan (born Nancy) Verhelst told the media, "I was ready to celebrate my new birth.
"But when I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be ... a monster."
He is no longer around to sue his gynaecologist and psychiatrist.
(5) Euthanasia to cover doctors' crimes.
Ann G suffered anorexia nervosa and consulted a renowned psychiatrist, who she alleged sexually abused her.
She accused him on national television. Instead of being deregistered and jailed, he went back to work in private practice.
Ann G was distraught. She still had to live with her anorexia, she had become a victim of sexual abuse, and her tormenter was as free as a bird. But there was a solution. Late last year another psychiatrist helped her to die. Ann G will not be giving evidence at investigations into the doctor.
(6) Euthanasia as entertainment.
The practice has become trivialised in Belgium, the Brussels-based European Institute of Bioethics claimed last year in a comprehensive report.
This is a chilling and inhumane development but, as euthanasia becomes more common, it is only to be expected.
The death of Nathan Verhelst, for example, was broadcast on a local TV station. The leading euthanasia doctor in Belgium, Wim Distelmans, often appears on TV chat shows and talks -- and jokes -- about some of his cases.
(7) Euthanasia as a cosy little club.
The go-to guy for euthanasia in Belgium is Dr Distelmans, an oncologist. He has done a number of them. The chief publicist for euthanasia is also Dr Distelmans. He is a familiar face on television and is constantly lobbying for more bracket creep.
And the government appointee who heads the panel that assesses whether doctors have acted within the law is, you guessed it: Dr Distelmans.
Is it any wonder that after 10 years and about 5500 cases, not one case of euthanasia has ever been referred to the Belgian police?
You won't find these details in the report written by Lara Giddings and Nick McKim to spruik their Bill. But that's what euthanasia is: a grubby, impersonal and exploitative business. Is this what the elderly, disabled and disadvantaged in Tasmania deserve?
Michael Cook is editor of the online bioethics news service BioEdge.
1 comment:
From the very beginning of their campaigns to get laws passed, all their pretended compassion for the poor suffering victims, and their intolerable pain, was nothing but a scam.
From the very beginning, it was merely a revival of the real Holocaust, which has never ended.--Operation T-4.
While you guys were at the 2013 Symposium yesterday, I learned something which is being debated or legislated in New York:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive//ldn/2010/apr/10042906
I don't know how many people are being stripped of their organs, because they are presumed dead. This article explains that one person woke up.
Earlier this year, I read about a guy who was discovered is a car or truck, on the side of the road. whoever found him called the ambulance; and it was out in the country.
Paramedics never checked for a pulse, and neither did the hospital. When the pathologist began to perform the autopsy, the knife carving into his skull caused him to yell.--And nearly gave the pathologist a heart-attack.
Just before I close, there is something else I learned a few days ago from the MUHC Patients' Committee, which will make Belgium seem like history.
The current real problem is Quebec. What I received via email is strictly classified, but Dr. Gursahaney is a very dangerous enemy holding too much power in Montreal's MUHC.
I hope that Nicolas Steenhout can look up information on this doctor, because I sent an immediate strong response to the secretary who sent the newsletter to many MUHC Patient-Committee members.
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