A Dutch doctor has been acquitted after slipping a sedative into a patient’s coffee and then giving her a lethal injection.
The 74-year-old patient, who had dementia, had to be held down by her own family members so that the final injection could be given. The court ruled that the procedure did not break the law.
Why was it under-reported?
The facts of the story were fairly widely covered – but it attracted strikingly little commentary, given that it was a dramatic test case. It raises questions for all countries and regions which have permitted assisted suicide, or are contemplating doing so.
The doctor’s defence was that, in a written statement four years previously, the patient had said she wanted to be euthanised. That was enough to qualify as “consent” – even though the patient could only be killed by methods that were at first surreptitious and then forced.
What will happen next?
The case indicates just how quickly the practice of euthanasia can change a culture. In the Netherlands, one in four deaths are induced by doctors, whether by lethal injection or “terminal sedation”, which involves dehydrating the patient to death.
Assisted suicide advocates often say that the Dutch system is unusual, and that more stringent safeguards would prevent such expansions. But the trend is towards the relaxation of safeguards: Oregon, held up as a model of a cautious assisted suicide law, relaxed its regulations this year.
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