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E-PrinceIn opposing the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, Peter Harrell '02 in his April 3 column claims that the example of the Netherlands — so far the only country in the world where both of these practices take place ...
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Baloney. My mother-in-law was euthanized without her knowledge or consent. It is common in Dutch nursing homes. What lies you tell.
Singer seems unfazed that people who have not given consent are being uthenaised involuntarily. Oddly he offers the closeness to natural death as the argument for accepting murder. Why not wait for legal death?
Secondly he seems to conflate the legal medical practice of keeping a patient comfortable by ensuring they are pain free even if the drugs needed to do that will very likely bring about death, with euthanasia the two are quite different in practice and intent.
This is in accord with reasonable patient care, not euthanasia.
Patients are always able to check out of hospital/doctor care and go home to die in their own way if they wish, legally.
But euthanasia is very different because it does not demand patient request and fully concious consent, and can be promoted by people who stand to gain by the death, or have undue influence over a frail, sick person in pain, for example children and relatives, due to inherit or sick of the burden of care.
Doctors trained in hospitals where euthanasia is legal and widely practised will over time be less and less particular about observing the letter of the law and more and more likely to justify their decision to euthanase by virtue of expediency. So old, life has lost all pleasure, single and poor can't afford medication or carers, hospital costs, need beds, can't justify the cost of treatment to the state, I don't like treating extreme pain I'm too kind I'll just kill them like a cat or dog, etc etc. Endless ways to rationalise wrong doing as seen in those famous experiments to see how much pain people would inflict on another person if they were convinced they had the right to do so!