Dutch doctors told to lie on euthanasia reports.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

My suspicions have been confirmed by the latest promotion campaign by the Dutch euthanasia clinic who are proudly reporting that requests for euthanasia, at the clinic, have increased by 15%. The euthanasia clinic claims that, doctors across the Netherlands are referring patients to the clinic rather than kill the patient themselves.

An article by Janene Pieters that was published in the NL Times states:

The unrest among doctors began in 2017 when the Public Prosecution Service launched a criminal investigation into a doctor who performed euthanasia on a 74-year-old woman with advanced dementia. When she was still lucid, the woman indicated that she wanted euthanasia when the time was "right", but after her admittance to a nursing home she made contrary statements. The doctor eventually performed the euthanasia, in consultation with the woman's family. He was charged with murder and had to appear in court last week.

This confirms what I stated in my article about the Netherlands 2018 euthanasia statistics:

I am convinced that the lower number of reported euthanasia deaths is primarily related to the euthanasia cases that are being prosecuted in the Netherlands and Belgium. Doctors don't want to be brought before a tribunal or court to justify why they lethally injected a patient.

Further to that, Dutch physicians are also being told to lie on euthanasia reports. Pieters reports:

A doctor who was subject to a judicial investigation recently warned his colleagues about the judiciary in a article published in Medisch Contact. "Be careful with what you provide in reports", he wrote. "In your honesty and sincerity you give everything you have. In a criminal case, that is immediately 'evidence'." The case against him was dismissed, but it affected me deeply. "As a doctor, you have no idea what can happen to you."

The Dutch euthanasia data suggests that some doctors lie on their euthanasia reports. This is the first time it has been reported that Dutch doctors are being told to lie on euthanasia reports.

• Dutch 2018 euthanasia statistics.
• Netherlands study: 431 people were killed without consent in 2015.