Flemish doctors not only admit to killing patients who have not requested to be euthanized, but the levels of such terminations without request or consent are barely under the rate of legal voluntary euthanasia. From the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (may have to manually download):
We found that, five years after the euthanasia law was enacted in Belgium, euthanasia and assisted suicide occurred in 2.0% of all deaths in Flanders during the study period period. They predominantly involved patients less than 80 years old, patients with cancer and patients dying at home…The use of life-ending drugs without an explicit request from the patient occurred in 1.8% of the deaths in Flanders during the study period. Most of these cases involved patients 80 years or older and occurred in hospital. In the majority of cases, the patient was not involved in the decision, primarily because of coma or dementia; however, relatives and other caregivers were often consulted. Considerations involving the relatives and needless prolongation of life were reasons indicated by physicians for reaching the decision.
Or, we could say Flemish doctors murdered their patients since explicit request is required under the supposedly “protective” euthanasia “guidelines.”
The study reeks with the usual terminal nonjudgmentalism we now see so often among the professional journal set. Rather than condemning non voluntary killing and urging that all steps be taken to stop the practice and punish the perpetrators, the authors instead suggest blandly that greater efforts are needed to reduce the number. More explicitly, it strongly implies that the non voluntary death doctors should at least use more effective drugs when they set out to kill:
Physicians in our study who indicated an intention to hasten the patient’s death without an explicit request from the patient most often used opioids, alone or with benzodiazepines. The use of opioids for ending life are discouraged because the patient may regain consciousness and because the procedure can take longer than expected. Furthermore, the life-shortening effect of opioids is subject to speculation. Recent studies have shown that the actual effect on the end of life is prone to overestimation. The estimated time by which life was shortened in many of the cases in our study was already very limited, especially compared with the estimated time in the cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide. We also found that, although physicians specified an intention to hasten death, opioids were often given in doses that were not higher than needed to relieve the patient’s pain. This suggests that the practice of using life-ending drugs without an explicit patient request in reality resembles more intensified pain alleviation with a “double effect,” and death was in many cases not hastened. The problem may also exist in other countries; for example, in the study in the Netherlands, opioids were also frequently administered to end life without an explicit patient request. This points to the need for education of caregivers about misconceptions of opioid use.
So, I guess Belgian doctors need continuing education on how to better kill their patients who have not asked to die. Hippocrates weeps.
May 17th, 2010 | 5:16 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stand In The Gap, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Nearly as Many Life Terminations Without Consent as Voluntary Euthanasia Deaths in Flanders » Secondhand Smoke http://shar.es/mCa9o [...]
May 18th, 2010 | 6:40 am
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May 18th, 2010 | 7:53 am
Hold that (paper) tiger!
Maybe we’ll begin worrying about it when Belgium takes over the US healthcare system. Until then, what is acceptable to people in Belgium is totally irrelevant to the matter of assisted suicide at home.
May 18th, 2010 | 12:48 pm
Wesley,
Perhaps the authors of the report could adopt the slogan “Better dying through chemistry”.
Regarding the tone of the article, it brings to mind a quote from George Bernard Shaw that I read recently, “all professions are a conspiracy against the laity.”
HistoryWriter,
” . . . what is acceptable to people in Belgium is totally irrelevant to the matter of assisted suicide at home.”
That statement is inane. First, in regards to the specific question at hand, the journal report, and Wesley’s article, refers to a practice that is illegal under Belgian law – euthanization without specific request or consent. It is, then, at least debatable as to whether this specific practice is “acceptable” to the Belgian people.
Second, and much more troubling, this sounds like a bizarre twist on those commercials for Las Vegas – What happens in Belgium stays in Belgium. Do you mean to say that any practice allowed by law, custom, or both, in any other nation state is no matter of our concern? Would you make the same statement if the subject at hand were slavery, child labor or genital mutilation?
Just because the actors in this case are licensed medical professionals does not shield them from scrutiny or judgement, whether from within their own country or from outside. We have a right to be concerned about or object to the practice itself and to be concerned about whether this type of practice could be adopted in our own country.
May 18th, 2010 | 5:35 pm
Peter S.
The world is filled with people who have nothing better to do than mind other people’s business. You may consider the concept inane, but the fact remains that if euthanasia is a problem for the Belgians they’ll do something about it themselves; and if they don’t, your concern is worth less than an iota to them. The very thin line between concern and officiousness is one that people seem all to eager to cross these days. I’ll feel a little more comfortable with America’s imagined mandate to save the world when so-called conservatives stop advocating social Darwinism at home.
May 21st, 2010 | 2:49 pm
Wesley, in looking at the article, I noticed these half-hearted phrases a couple of times where they said something (going from memory here) like, “Efforts should be made to reduce the number of terminations without consent.” But they kept saying that the solution to this was better end-of-life planning. I got the very distinct impression (but you can tell me if you think I’m reading between the lines) that their idea was to induce more people to _consent_ to active euthanasia should they develop dementia, and then there would be fewer terminations without consent.
June 10th, 2010 | 2:00 pm
[...] non voluntary euthanasia deaths. Thus, I am anything but surprised by the study I analyze below, which echoes an earlier one reported here at SHS, that nearly as many Belgian euthanasia killings are non voluntary as of those that are [...]
June 18th, 2010 | 10:15 am
[...] voluntary euthanasia deaths. Thus, I am anything but surprised by the study I analyze below, which echoes an earlier one reported here at SHS, that nearly as many Belgian euthanasia killings are non voluntary as of those that are [...]
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