Holland allows secret sedation of euthanasia patients
Critics alarmed at change to right-to-die rules, which will affect those who are no longer able to give consent
NEW euthanasia rules in the Netherl ands will allow doctors to spike patients’ drinks with sleeping pills to stop them becoming violent before lethal injections.
The changes to the country’s rightto-die medical code come in the wake of a court ruling that overturned a murder charge against Marinou Arends, a nursing home doctor. Dr Arends had secretly slipped a sedative into the coffee of a 74-year-old female dementia sufferer before administering a lethal injection.
The woman had reached an advanced stage of dementia, where she was no longer capable of giving any kind of informed consent on the timing of the treatment.
Dr Arends was given a written reprimand by the Dutch medical board for acting on the basis of two “advance directives”, in which the patient had said only that she wished to die when she considered “the time was right”.
Critics also said the patient was robbed of the dignified end that euthanasia is supposed to provide. When she had sat up in bed to try to avoid being given the injection, a relative had pushed her back down.
The Dutch Supreme Court, however, said the doctor had acted within the country’s 2002 euthanasia law, ruling that if a patient was no longer capable of consent due to dementia, medics had the leeway to decide for themselves when the time was right to terminate the patient’s life.
The ruling has alarmed opponents of euthanasia, who claim that the Netherlands – a pioneer in the practice – is interpreting the rules ever more widely.
However, the country’s euthanasia review committee believes that the amendments to its code will give doctors extra legal backing in cases where it is “pointless” to try to seek consent.
The new code says that in cases where a patient has advanced dementia, “it is not necessary for the doctor to agree with the patient the time or manner in which euthanasia will be given”.
It also backs doctors putting sedatives in the food or drink of patients with advanced dementia, if they are concerned that the patient will become “disturbed, agitated or aggressive”.
Jacob Kohnstamm, the chairman of the regional euthanasia review committees, said the clarification stressed the reasonable, professional judgment of doctors and could relieve fears of prosecution. “It’s only two or three cases a year but this might help doctors to have less fear of a penal case,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
The ruling has been opposed by some Dutch medical practitioners. When news of Dr Arends’s case emerged in 2018, more than 200 medics issued a statement saying that no doctor should be allowed to secretly sedate patients before euthanasia. Dr Jaap Schuurmans, who has researched cases in which relatives of patients had pressured doctors to fast-track euthanasia, said: “This freedom has been there in law from the beginning, but the law is being interpreted more and more broadly. Nobody can look inside the head of someone with dementia.”
The Netherlands, which is known for its socially liberal attitudes, was among the first countries to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Last month, the Dutch government also approved plans to allow euthanasia for terminally ill children, arguing that it would stop them “suffering hopelessly and unbearably”.