Two-year-old euthanised in Netherlands in first assisted dying case of its kind

[IwantToRetire]

I'm not going to select any part of the article but just post the link for those who want to read
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/netherlands-infant-2-euthanised-assisted-37709218

That sounds horrific, where did it happen? I can't imagine that would be lawful in the UK.

But I'm not talking about withdrawal of food or mum cuddles, I'm talking about withdrawal of treatment - drugs, breathing support etc. Sorry if I was unclear.

Me too.

Though slightly different as my son wasn't premature but had a serious illness when he was 8 and is now disabled due to some complications and wasn't initially expected to survive.

Which is something else to consider, not all children are born very poorly and/or medically complex. My son was healthy and then he wasn't, in the blink of an eye.

Doctors have to make decisions everyday based on availability and prognosis. One of the things they consider is giving a liver to someone who is an alcoholic - does that make sense when there are limited donations ? The doctor I heard pointed out to the patient that they as a team will make a decision about resuscitation as the likelihood of brain damage would be enormous. I imagine that was shocking to hear as the patient was in denial about her alcoholism.

Some people here obviously have never witnessed a death where someone is just " left to die" . They basically die from dehydration. It is horrific . They don't go peacefully. Yes they can be given pain relief and sometimes the " side effect" of that is death. Thank god for those doctors.

Hospital pharmacists used to quietly up and up the doses to bring death faster in those end-stage situations sometimes. Don't know if they still do. And the problem was that it depended on the doctor, pharmacist and situation.

Calling euthanasia is a bit misleading, from what I read the two year old was on life support from birth so actually they just decided to stop that

the actual translation is "actively ended" the life of the child. In Dutch, "euthanasia" is used only if you're over 12. Below that the phrase used is "actively ended"

The general meaning at one point in the article is that pediatric professor Eduard Verhagen says that stopping food / water can have negative side effects for the child, where you can worsen their suffering. And palliative care isn't so easy as it sounds in children, according to him.

They don't say exactly how the active ending of life was carried out. If it's like the people I knew who went for euthanasia (adults) it's done by drug infusion.

I believe the child had a tracheostomy which supports breathing but is also quite different to a standard ventilator.

This is the report from the committee btw.
Poor little one

Click at the end for an English translation

https://www.lzalpkcommissie.nl/publicaties/oordelen/lk/2026/lk-2026-001

Ah, thanks @Somuchgoo

A very difficult read. May you rest in peace now dear child 🙏

Thank you @Somuchgoo

From the report:-

“All facets of ‘being human’ in terms of motor skills, behavior and personality were seriously affected and this would not improve,” the committee reported.

“Despite all the medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor saw no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearable and hopeless.”

However, the parents did seek a second opinion – and those doctors disagreed with their colleagues.

“These doctors found that there was no continuous unbearable suffering at that time. The epilepsy was accompanied by a lot of discomfort, but the epileptic seizures were not continuous.

“Their conclusion was that there were other reasonable solutions, such as palliative options and drug alternatives that could possibly lead to better seizure control of epilepsy,” the committee reported.

The treating doctor and the parents sought a third opinion and found a doctor who agreed that euthanasia was the only option.

When I learnt about this case, I am going to be honest, I felt disturbed by it. After reading the report that @Somuchgoo has posted I feel even more deeply disturbed and I will try to articulate why.

What particularly troubles me is that the medical opinions apparently weren’t unanimous. The treating doctor and parents believed she was suffering unbearably and hopelessly, but a second group of doctors reportedly disagreed. They said her seizures were not continuous, that there wasn’t continuous unbearable suffering at that time, and that there were still other options, including palliative care and alternative medication that might improve seizure control. A third doctor was then found who agreed that euthanasia was the only option.

I think what I’m struggling with most is the finality of it. She was only two, unable to understand or consent to what was happening, and there was disagreement among doctors about the extent of her suffering and whether other reasonable options remained.

I believe profoundly that a person's dignity and value doesn't depend on their abilities, behaviour, personality or quality of life. I believe suffering should be treated and compassionately accompanied, but that deliberately causing someone's death is fundamentally different from relieving their suffering.

I don't think the parents necessarily acted out of anything other than love and desperation, and I don't want to judge people facing something unimaginably awful. But I can't shake the feeling that something very profound has been crossed when the solution to a severely disabled child's suffering becomes intentionally ending the child's life — particularly when there was medical disagreement about whether that was truly the only option.

I think that's why this has affected me so deeply. It isn't just the individual case; it's the underlying question of what we believe makes a human life worth protecting, especially when that person is extremely vulnerable and unable to speak for themselves.

It's interesting (and utterly tragic) that one of the alternatives considered (but rejected by parents) was sedation and starving to death of this little boy. Honestly, the euthanasia sounds gentle by comparison.

I can't imagine what that little one went through, as it is clear although he was very cognitively disabled, this didn't dent his ability to feel distress or pain.

No one could have anticipated the consequences of saving this little boy born prematurely. Statistics were on his side. It's incredibly tragic.

I read the child was female.
Edited to add I can't find the article that said the child was female and have googled and the sex hasn't been declared so please ignore this post.

I thought I'd heard boy, which is why I used he, but it appears that we don't know - the child's sex hasn't been released.

Edited to say, cross post!

I think I'll continue to use he though because 'the child' or 'they' feels too impersonal. Likewise, I totally get it you want to continue to use she. If in doubt, I usually default to female.

My son is complex but not half as complex as the child in question and I can't think of a time when any decision in his MDT meetings were unanimous. It would be rare in such a complex case for an unanimous decision to be made I think and even more so when it's about ending a child's life.

That’s what I find so concerning about euthanasia being permitted. When there is disagreement, uncertainty, or the possibility that different professionals may interpret a person's condition and quality of life differently, the consequences of getting that decision wrong are irreversible.

Surely in the 99.9% of cases where euthanasia is at the person's wish, their own consistent stated wishes should be respected?

A two-year-old cannot understand death, give informed consent, or make an autonomous decision to end their life. In this situation, the decision was made by adults on the child’s behalf. But that inevitably raises a difficult question: if society accepts that someone other than the patient can make the decision in one circumstance, where should the boundary be drawn? If parents can ask for an end to their child's life why shouldn't an adult be allowed to do that for their mother or father with dementia?

I think a person’s consistent, informed and freely expressed wishes should carry a great deal of weight, especially when it comes to decisions about their own suffering and medical care. But I don’t think that automatically settles the ethical question of euthanasia, because there are also questions about capacity, coercion, vulnerability, and what role medicine and society should have in intentionally ending someone’s life. Respecting someone’s wishes is important, but it doesn’t necessarily mean every requested action is ethically justified.

I would like it to be an option for people with dementia. If I had dementia I hope someone would end my suffering if I couldn’t.

It should be quality of life over quantity.

That has happened where pre-written instructions by the person themselves were left, in the NL. Something like "when I can no longer recognise my family or remember my own name" was the trigger point. It was highly controversial actually, for very understandable reasons im mildly reluctant to put here given the lack of nuanced understanding on the thread.

But that's one possible limit, if the person themselves has left pre-existing instructions. A child such as this one never had the mental faculty to express any wishes in the first place.

It does open the question as to would parents be allowed to euthanise a grown child who had, to the best of knowledge, never had any mental capacity at all. It would need very careful thinking about but to my mind the answer should be no, unless there was considerable evidence of serious distress.

I have a friend with a severely disabled child as a result of birth trauma. He suffers from epilepsy that is resistant to medication and had periods of awful, continuous suffering - including his condition being made worse by some of the medication attempted. My friend is a PTSD sufferer because of that. The boy is now 8, over the past years his condition improved quite a lot - nobody knows why- where he goes months sometimes without seizures, and of course there are many other challenges as he is profoundly disabled, but he is one of the happier people I know. Always with a smile, curious and sociable, loves going to school and has friends there, loves ice cream and flowers.

Has it been worth the pain he’s experienced? I don’t know. It was fucking awful for his parents to live through. What if things haven’t changed for the better? But they have, and that’s the thing that bothers me about the NL case.

Saying with confidence that there is no hope for improvement and only endless suffering in the future is so much harder when a child is in question..