The Dutch Supreme Court has ruled that doctors can carry out a euthanasia request even if the patient developed severe dementia and could not give final consent to the procedure.
A public prosecutor had brought murder charges against a doctor who euthanised a woman with severe dementia in 2016 after her family and two doctors agreed her suffering was incurable and unbearable.
The woman, 74, had written she should be euthanised if she had to go into a nursing home, but then said on arrival there that she wanted to decide the time of her death. When doctors judged seven weeks later that she was no longer rational, she resisted the procedure. A doctor put a sedative in her coffee and later administered the fatal drugs.
A lower court ruled last year this did not violate the law. In its first ruling on euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld that decision on 21 April.
Cardinal Willem Eijk, a trained physician as well as head of the Dutch bishops’ conference and its spokesman for ethical issues, sharply criticised the decision.
"Instead of laying down criteria for interpreting the written euthanasia declarations of patients with advanced dementia, the Supreme Court leaves this to the judgement of the physicians involved, by which their uncertainty only grows,” he said.
The Public Prosecutors Office seemed to agree with Eijk’s argument about uncertainty. While the ruling was “important for doctors and patients,” it said, it did not answer all legal questions and other cases could yet be investigated.
Euthanasia has widespread support in the Netherlands, with 87 per cent backing the practice in some circumstances, according to its national statistics agency, CBS.
Muslims and strict Protestants are least likely to support any form of euthanasia, but even among them there is a majority support. Eight in 10 people also support euthanasia for people with severe dementia, if they had made their wishes plain before they became ill. Some 74 per cent back euthanasia for people with severe psychiatric problems and 75 per cent for children with terminal illnesses.
Euthanasia was legalised in the Netherlands in 2002 for those over 12 experiencing “hopeless and unbearable suffering”, who want to die and have come to the conclusion independently. At 16 killings per day, it accounts for around 4 per cent of deaths in the country.
Loading ...
