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Royal Dutch Medical Association: Doctors should be able to kill those who aren't ill
A Zogby poll commissioned by two pro-euthanasia groups in Vermont found that 80 percent of that state's residents would support a bill allowing terminally ill patients to receive medication from their doctors to hasten their deaths. Self-described "very conservative" respondents and those who attend church once a week or more were the only groups with a majority opposing such legislation, the Associated Press reports.

The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, which opposes euthanasia, notes that the poll's wording carefully avoids the phrase "physician-assisted suicide."

About 3,400 miles from Vermont, physician-assisted suicide is again in the news in the Netherlands, the world's euthanasia trailblazer. Physician-assisted suicide has been legal there since 2001, with thousands of deaths now deliberately caused by doctors. (One report says about half of the procedures go unreported.) In November, a Dutch hospital revealed that it had been euthanasing infants, though Dutch law says patients must repeatedly ask to be killed, and must file a written declaration before a doctor is allowed to kill the patient.

Now the Dutch medical community wants more freedom to kill. "Doctors can help patients who ask for help to die even though they may not be ill but 'suffering through living,' concludes a three year inquiry commissioned by the Royal Dutch Medical Association," the British Medical Journal reports today. (The association's report is here, but in Dutch.)

The report comes a year after physician Philip Sutorius had his criminal conviction appeal rejected by the Dutch Supreme Court. In 1998 Sutorius performed an "assisted suicide" on politician Edward Brongersma, who had no major disease other than feeling his existence was "pointless and empty." Being "tired of life" is no grounds for death, Dutch courts said, but Sutorius was not punished since he showed "concern for his patient."

The current situation, then, is murky. The Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that patients must have a "classifiable physical or mental condition" to be killed, but the country's euthanasia law only says the person must be "suffering hopelessly and unbearably."

Jos Dijkhuis, who led the Royal Dutch Medical Association inquiry, says patients merely "tired of life" shouldn't be granted physician-assisted suicide, but that doctors alone should be allowed to decide whether patients' "suffering through living" is severe enough for death.

Slippery-slope arguments are often faulty, but the Royal Dutch Medical Association seems to be going out of its way to demonstrate that such slopes really do exist.

Note
All tsunami-related stories are being covered in a separate weblog this week.

Church and state (non-U.S.):

• Buddhism bill unconstitutional- Supreme Court | The clauses of the Bill were such that if enacted into law, it would effectively result in religious persecution not only of minorities, but also in certain respects, adherents of Buddhism with Constitutional sanction, which was an objective inconsistent with the very spirit of the Constitution, a secular state, norms of pluralist democracy and international obligations of Sri Lanka, stated the CPA in its objection, legal sources said (TamilNet)
• Namibian Broadcasting Corporation bans religious devotions - claims a need to 're-visit guidelines' | All religious programming from television and radio immediately suspended until further notice (The Namibian)

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49