Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Opposition party D66 has drawn up draft legislation to remove euthanasia from the criminal code in a move to make it less difficult for doctors to help people with dementia to die at their request.The Dutchnews.nl article reported that the:
D66 leader Rob Jetten said doctors are “afraid of the consequences” and that a new law would “provide more cover for doctors if they agree to perform euthanasia on people with dementia.”The D66 want the Netherlands to completely decriminalize euthanasia, so that doctors who are willing to kill people who are incompetent and living with dementia could do so. The NL Times reported on April 16 that:
Doctors are allowed to grant the requests of people suffering from dementia, but if the illness is advanced, then the thinking ability and capacity to make decisions are limited. This leads to doctors struggling with the requests as the suffering cannot be exactly determined, and an earlier request for euthanasia cannot be re-confirmed.The Dutchnews.nl reported that ChristenUnie MP Mirjam Bikker responded to the D66 proposal by stating:
“D66 keeps moving the goalposts for euthanasia. What used to be an exception is becoming the norm. Vulnerable life deserves care and protection. Let’s put more effort into that instead of a new push towards death,”
Waterfield also reported that in 2024 there were 219 psychiatric euthanasia deaths which was up from 138 in 2023 and 115 in 2022.
When euthanasia was first legalized it was based on providing euthanasia for competent adults who were freely capable of consenting.
People with dementia are not competent adults who are capable of consenting.
If euthanasia for dementia is accepted, then euthanasia for people with cognitive disabilities will be next.
6 comments:
Here it comes - the quiet part can finally be shouted. Euthanasia was never about mercy but about reducing social costs by eliminating humans perceived as “ less than useful.” Aktion T4 is reborn unless we wale up and resist.
My last position in a 47 year nursing career was as a hospice case manager for a Jewish affiliated nursing home. Although in the community and skilled nursing facility we cared for adult patients of all ages and conditions, many of our patients were Holocaust survivors. As teenagers they were systematically starved in camps,
and deprived of medical care, by a regime that killed their families and was trying to kill them . Now they were in their 90s, a few were centenarians. Most suffered from dementia. Some were Orthodox, some atheists. Their families were very concerned that hospice would hasten their deaths.i remember one tearful daughter saying " They [the Nazis] tried to starve my mother to death in 1943, I don't want you to do it now in a Jewish nursing home." It took hours to educate her that tube feedings in end stage of the natural progression of dementia have been research proven not to help and often caused unnecessary suffering. We always provided comfort pleasure feeding even if it took 45 minutes to do so , until patient could no longer tolerate them or lost consciousness . I remember a Russian lady , an end stage nonverbal dementia patient ,who I had seen every day for months. I talked to her as I did her skin and oral care, in my rudimentary Russian and English. She was a retired teacher. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to sleep thru all my ministrations. One day, after 16 months of these daily visits, after I turned and repositioned her she opened her eyes and said, simply, " thank you". No words before for 16 months, no words after. But a person is there, inside. The Jewish. Islamic and Christian ethos proclaim that the suffering patient exists to test our levels of compassion and service for the vulnerable among us. Killing demented people in a profit centered health system relieves the society of the burden of providing care for them.
EXTENDING THE RIGHT-TO-DIE
TO ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS:
USE THE MEDICAL MODEL.
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"When euthanasia was first legalized it was based on providing euthanasia for competent adults who were freely capable of consenting".
This is incorrect. Immediately from its inception in 2001, the Dutch allowed people ro make euthanasia requests by advance directive. That option was intentionally added by legislators to enable euthanasia for dementia patients after they have lost capacity.
The first comment said, "Euthanasia was never about mercy but about reducing social costs by eliminating humans perceived as ' less than useful.'" This reminds me of the Nazi idea of "lebensunwurdige Leben", meaning "life (which is) unworthy of life" i.e not fit to live - a horrifying concept.
My mother died of Alzheimers. I had been caring for her for years, and she had become totally non-verbal, yet I continued to speak to her as if she could still talk. One day I was doing some aspect of her care, and I asked her to do something (I forget precisely what) when she complied I said "Thankyou". To my utter shock she looked up at me and said very clearly "You're Welcome" - and I realized that she was still there, the person who was my mother was still inside - and was not to be simply snuffed out as an 'inconvenience' by the system. Fighting for her life resulted in a great deal of harassment by the system, and even the local police. This happened on Vancouver Island - where "Island Health" murders 104 out of every 100 K residents, annually. (as of 2023).
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