Where’s a Dutch uncle when you need one?
Because somebody needs to say something about this:
People suffering from an incurable mental disease have the same legal right to euthanasia as physically terminally ill patients in the Netherlands, but they almost never get it.
OMG, we’re not killing enough people! We’re not doing our part!
The Dutch law that legalized euthanasia in 2002 also applies to the mentally ill, but psychiatrists have so far been extremely reluctant to resort to assisted suicide.
Of the 2,331 cases reviewed by the regional euthanasia review committees in 2008 only two involved psychiatric patients. All doctors are obligated to report assisted suicides to the committees, who then investigate if all the legal requirements were met.
It’s those shrinks, dammit. They’re not pulling their own weight:
“Psychiatrists have a holier-than-thou attitude,” Hans van Dam, a nurse and a teacher, said at a symposium organised by the Right to Die-NL foundation in the Dutch town of Ede on Monday [23 November]. The taboo on assisted suicide for mental patients needs to be broken, Van Dam argued. “To put it bluntly: cancer will kill you in a matter of years, but schizophrenia is forever.”
A modest proposal: Expose the schizophrenics to carcinogens.
“Lebensunwertes Leben,” horror to public policy in three generations — Action T4 for the 21st Century!
Death panels, anyone?
(Thanks to Mike Flynn.)
