Dutch Doctors Hasten Deaths of Sick Children With Euthanasia

By Steven Ertelt
Lifenews.com
Friday, September 9, 2005

Amsterdam, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) -- A new analysis
of Dutch doctors by researchers in the Netherlands finds
that they are more frequently using euthanasia to kill
sick children, sometimes taking the country's assisted
suicide laws as far as they will allow.

The European nation legalized euthanasia in 2002 and
previous reports show Dutch doctors granting most
patients' request to be killed.

The new study involves the deaths of 64 children during a
four month period and finds that doctors hastened the
deaths of 42 of them. The government-sponsored study gave
the doctors immunity from having their names revealed or
being prosecuted for their actions and their responses
were kept anonymous.

According to the Irish Examiner newspaper, the report
finds doctors engaged in actions varying from withholding
life support from patients doctors believed would die
anyway to administering drugs such as morphine with the
intent of hurrying a patient's death.

One case involved euthanasia in the strictest sense -- a
doctor making the decision to directly take a patient's
life because he believed the patient was beyond hope.

Astrid Vrakking of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam
told the Examiner that, in other situations, the actions
"take place at the boundaries of what is legally
allowed."

"Whether or not these boundaries are supportive or
rightful is, of course, a matter of debate," Vrakking
added.

The report describes one case where physicians gave an 18
month old child suffering from a progressive
neurodegenerative disease sedatives and drugs after the
parents requested them.

Meanwhile, an August report in the August issue of
Archives of Internal Medicine claims Dutch doctors are
properly handling euthanasia and assisted suicide
requests that come their way. The study finds 44 percent
of people who seek assisted suicide are killed, 13
percent change their minds and doctors refuse in only 12
percent of the cases.

Susan M. Wolf, J.D., of the University of Minnesota Law
School, has studied euthanasia and assisted suicide in
the Netherlands and doesn't think it would work in the
United States.

"The Dutch have struggled mightily for more than two
decades to devise a system to oversee physician-assisted
suicide and euthanasia and keep both practices within
agreed bounds. It is not clear that they have succeeded,"
Wolf says.

The study was published Monday in the September issue of
Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

http://www.lifenews.com/bio1126.html

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No prizes for knowing this was going to happen.

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:38:52 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher

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-To: Aussie Dasher

I remember something like this happening in Germany about
60 years ago. ping to Moral Absolutes list

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:41:31 PM PDT by darkangel82

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-To: Aussie Dasher

What a sad world we live in when we kill our most
helpless. Why don't people realize taht we are all born
with a purpose and that God desides our fate, not man?

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:44:19 PM PDT by Halls
  (Terri Schindler Schiavo was murdered legally in our
    country, NEVER FORGET!!!)

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-To: Aussie Dasher

"Sick children" can put a real strain on a "free" and
"universal" health care system.

  Sarcasm/off

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:45:12 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer
  (We did not lose in Vietnam. We left.)

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-To: Aussie Dasher

Just late term abortions. Move along. Nothing to see.

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:50:18 PM PDT by dynachrome
  ("Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a
     handbasket?")

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-To: Aussie Dasher

I can't imagine the hell of seeing your child terminally
ill, wracked with pain, and dying by inches.

There's an old saying- "Tend the wounded, heal the sick,
but let the dying spirit go."

I say, give someone who is dying enough pain medication
to make them comfortable. At some point, the amount of
medication needed to ease their pain will stop their
heart. Is that murder?

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:50:19 PM PDT by Ostlandr
  (NeopaganNeocon)

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-To: Ostlandr

You mean, like Terri?

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:52:13 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher

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-To: Aussie Dasher

lebensunwertes Lebens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-4_Euthanasia_Program

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:53:18 PM PDT by Petronski
  (I love Cyborg. Gosh I miss her!)

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-To: Ostlandr

No, but if you intentionally hasten the death it is.

Mrs VS

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:53:48 PM PDT by VeritatisSplendor

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-To: Salvation

lebensunwertes Lebens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-4_Euthanasia_Program

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:54:08 PM PDT by Petronski
  (I love Cyborg. Gosh I miss her!)

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-To: Aussie Dasher

I'll bet there is one subset of sick children that are
not affected: children of Dutch doctors.

Posted on 9/08/2005 7:59:36 PM PDT by isom35

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-To: Aussie Dasher

She was starved to death- and as far as I could tell, not
in any pain (before they starved her, anyway.) That was
murder, not euthanasia, despite what the Left claims.
She wasn't dying fast enough (at all, actually) to suit
her husband - that was the problem.

Posted on 9/08/2005 8:04:09 PM PDT by Ostlandr
  (NeopaganNeocon)

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End of forwarded messages

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Om Shanti

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The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:

    "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
    "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
    "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.

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