Cultural dimensions and themes of the pro-euthanasia movement: the special case of Holland.

Abstract

The article dwells upon euthanasia and more especially on the situation concerning this issue in the Netherlands. How is it possible that the Dutch people, and more particularly Dutch doctors apparently react more favourably to euthanasia as compared to any other European or Westerner? In author’s opinion, social-cultural and philosophical reasons caused this situation.

On the one hand, the mixture “tolerance-pride” which we find in Holland is the catalyst that sped up the acceptance of euthanasia in this same country. On the other hand, we notice that as anywhere else, the spearhead of those promoters of euthanasia is to be found in the secular-humanist spheres, called “free-thinking”, i.e. a circle as intellectual as it is atheistic. According to secular humanism the most essential good of man is his health. So, the doctor abandon his Hippocratic character of being at the side of a patient to cure him, to relieve him when he cannot cure him any more, to console him when he can no more relieve him any more. Nowadays, the doctor has become an expert judging about life and death, and has become in some sort a high-priest over health.

Moreover, the Dutch legal and epidemiological situation about euthanasia is showed. Finally, the author refuses the euthanasia, sustaining that when any fundamental right to life is denied to any individual of the human race, we abandon the democratic era to enter a new era, a totalitarian era.