Re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch Prince Friso medical ethics and the ordeal of social inequality

[Karin Spaink <karin@spaink.net>]

On Aug 28, 2012, at 18:07 , Keith Sanborn wrote:

> I was incredulous myself. Google Remenlink report and you will find the numbers are closer to 6,000 involuntary terminations of life

Ah, *that*. That was not 2000, but 1000 people. And the committee name is Remmelink. And these people - known as 'the Remmelink thousand" - weren't killed. These people were *in the actual process* of dying, and were so far gone that they could no longer express any wishes. In about 400 of these cases, these people had stated explicitly earlier on that they would want euthanasia. And that was *before* the euthanasia law passed. 

The practice is called 'sedation' in the UK, the US and Australia. It is much more common there than it is in NL  Based on Remmelink(1991/1995), Kuhse, Singer, Baume, Clark & Richard (MJA 1997) and Deliens & Mortier (The Lancet, 2000), the Netherlands use lethal 'sedation' in 0.8 % pct of all deaths, while in Australia its 3.5 % and in Flanders its 3.3 %. In all these cases, people were sedated to death, without them having asked explicitly for that.

So NL is doing much better than most countries....  due to its euthanasia law.


- K -

-- 
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