The Dutch way of death: Doctors and nurses in the Netherlands can practise euthanasia if they stick to certain guidelines. Yet many patients receive lethal injections without giving their consent - 20 June 1992 - New Scientist

The Dutch way of death: Doctors and nurses in the Netherlands can practise euthanasia if they stick to certain guidelines. Yet many patients receive lethal injections without giving their consent - 20 June 1992 - New Scientist: "When a patient requests euthanasia, Jans Borleffs feels 'honoured' to oblige. 'It's very personal,' he says, 'not a kick, not a feeling of power.' But like most doctors who enter the moral maze of euthanasia, Borleffs is also awed by his responsibilities. 'How is it possible that I am the one who can decide about life and death, when to terminate a life?' Borleffs has helped two people to die and has promised to help others. All are terminally ill with AIDS. All want their suffering to end before the illness finally claims their lives.

Although technically illegal in the Netherlands, over the past decade euthanasia has become an accepted part of Dutch health policy. While elsewhere doctors and philosophers remain locked in debate over the ethics of helping the dying to die, Dutch doctors have grasped the nettle. Each year they respond to requests for euthanasia from some 2700 terminally ill patients. Most ask their doctors to inject them with a fatal dose of drugs; some ask to be given drugs so that they can take their own lives. A further 22 500 Dutch patients per year receive 'passive' euthanasia, where a doctor shortens a life either by withdrawing treatment or deciding not to start it.

In some hospitals, doctors routinely approach patients who are terminally ill, offering to inject them with lethal doses of barbiturates and curare when and if their suffering becomes too great. As long as physicians follow a set of guidelines on euthanasia, issued in 1987 by the Royal Dutch Medical Association, they will not be prosecuted."