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

I imagine there could be some doctors, like Harold Shipman or nurses Beverley Allit or Lucy Letby who may be quite motivated. And besides when it is normalised for some doctors to breach previous ethical boundaries about 'doing no harm' it casts serious questions over the whole medical profession and its role and its responsibilities.

You're asking questions that highly intelligent trained ethecists have thrashed out for years to find a working system in the NL.

I think there would need to be a set of guidelines created in the UK. It would be sensible to take Dutch and other functioning societies' modus operandi into account.

In a way this child's case was relatively clearcut (relatively) because the cognitive development was so poor.

More uncertain and marginal cases are where it becomes harder. All I can say is that I think doctors' assessments and the parents' wishes should be taken into account, but that euthanasia is not out of the question. Nor should it be standard. There could be guidelines where there are enough of a type of case, but even so decisions would need to be made individually.

This is a concern, but other countries do manage it.

Perhaps there could be a time limit on how long medics could serve on a euthanasia team.

..... if you really want to think outside the box, perhaps actually this would have been the perfect job for Shipman. After all, the patients in question are asking for euthanasia. dry humour

Some controversial cases from the Netherlands

1. The 2016 Dementia / Sedated Patient Trial

• The Case: A 74-year-old woman with severe Alzheimer’s disease had previously written an advance euthanasia directive (AED) stating she wanted to die "when I want to," but also wrote that she could not decide at that moment. When the doctor proceeded with euthanasia, he slipped a sedative into her coffee because she was agitated, and her family had to hold her down as she resisted the injection.

• The Controversy: This marked the first time a criminal investigation was opened against a doctor under the 2002 law. In 2019, the court [The Hague] acquitted the doctor of all charges, ruling he acted lawfully and honored a valid prior written request, noting that severe dementia removes the capacity to re-verify consent. Critics, however, raised alarms about overriding active resistance from a dementia patient.

2. Psychiatric Suffering and Young Adults (Aurelia Brouwers and Zoraya ter Beek)

• Aurelia Brouwers (2018): The 29-year-old died via doctor-administered lethal medication after a long history of severe depression, borderline personality disorder, and chronic suicidality, despite having no terminal physical illness.
• Zoraya ter Beek (2024): The 29-year-old received approval for assisted dying after a multi-year evaluation process for chronic depression, autism, trauma, and anxiety.
• The Controversy: These cases sparked fierce international debate over whether psychological suffering should qualify for euthanasia. Critics argue that severe mental distress can be treatable or improve over time, and that granting euthanasia risks normalizing or encouraging suicide for psychiatric patients. Proponents maintain that mental suffering can be just as hopeless and unbearable as physical disease, which the Dutch Supreme Court acknowledged in the landmark 1994 Chabot case

If you found yourself in a position where you needed care, but you had no family or friends to help and you couldn’t find carers or couldn’t afford care, would you want to die alone suffering or have the option of being killed?

Yes. Those are controversial cases.

In both cases the patients had, clearly, stated their wishes. In one case when in her right mind. In one case when suffering severe long term psychological distress, and she stated over the ling term she wished to die.

Particularly the first case is uncomfortable, agreed. So is the situation where there is extreme unendurable pain.

There aren't easy answers to everything, and whether euthanasia is legal used or not -some- situations will be highly uncomfortable. I dont think that can be escaped.

I remember reading Zoraya ter Beek (2024)
I actually didn’t have a problem with her choosing to die, living was causing her immense suffering. If someone wants to die, that is their choice. Death is inevitable for all of us.

That is a hypothetical question. Feelings don't work in that way. Who knows how one would feel or what one might consider in any given situation. Feelings shift and change in response to the environment, to circumstances or to the time of day.I don't think this is a question of personal feelings anyway. As I've suggested..I think there are deeper ethical questions about boundaries that anyone in a civilised society must ponder. I don't think individual desires trump everything else.

It isn't a hypothetical question for some people, @Shortshriftandlethal

The numbers of homeless people on the streets of the UK are increasing. Since they are a block of people, they count as part of society.

Actually, euthanasia really IS, centrally, about the individual's desire to live or not. There is a societal aspect to it, but euthanasia is absolutely about each individual.

We need to face facts. If there is no money and no care available, an alternative like MAID would give people a choice. This is the society we live in right now. I’ve mentioned it before but Adult Social Care is collapsing fast.

There's also the question that would a really civilised society allow people to endure in agony when they don't wish to?

If there is no money, people who need care (and have no one) could end up facing severe neglect, unmanaged chronic illness or homelessness.

Is the UK heading this way?

Uh .....

..... It's already there.

I think it’s there too, but some people seem to be in denial!!

It doesn’t matter if people don’t agree with assisted dying and euthanasia. I think we need it as an option.

The UK faces a significant shortage and funding crisis in palliative and end-of-life care.

Jeez, if that's considered a good reason to euthanize a child I think we are past the point of no return in terms of moral decay.

But what was causing her suffering? It wasn’t just living with those conditions. A person with autism and depression like her is very vulnerable to both emotional manipulation and coercion. Autistic patients are often classed as complex or difficult and not much has been done to tailor psychiatric therapy for neurodivergent minds. It is obviously less effort, bother and expense to just assist a depressed autistic person commit suicide than it is to put in the years of therapy to help them. In addition, there is a stigma about autistic people often being a burden on society and less right to live. During covid, there were DNRs put on anyone with a neurodivergence or learning difficulty no matter how physically healthy they were because they were deemed less worthy of being treated for Covid.

Wait we need to euthanise people to save tax payer money?

I really don’t think it is ethical to push euthanasia or assisted dying because it’s the cheapest option and we need to keep taxes down.

This is probably the main reason why ultimately, I could never support it. Instead of funding things correctly, it would be pressuring vulnerable people to either end their own lives or family members lives to save money.

If there is no one to look after the very sick and disabled what is the solution? The reality is there’s a massive shortage of nurses and carers today which is only getting worse. The unsustainable demands of the job puts people off. Staff retention is a huge problem too.

Tax payers don’t decide how the money is spent. The government does.

The main problem is that people don't want to face the reality of the situation that the care system is parlous. They'd rather close their eyes to it. It's easy to say 'how awful' than to either face the reality of what they are condemning people to, or pay higher taxes.

In an ‘ideal world’ we would have plenty of funding to look after the most vulnerable in society. Unfortunately we don’t.

Thank you! You seem to be the only poster that understands this.