https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.1997.878
Medical-Ethical Decisions and Life-Terminating Actions in The Netherlands 1990-1995
Evaluation of the Second Survey of the Practice of Euthanasia
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
The paper deals with a critical evaluation of the Second Survey of the Practice of Euthanasia in The Netherlands. First of all, the authors underline that the Dutch law requests a notification or reporting procedure on euthanasia through a schedule annexed to article 10 of the law. This procedure also applies to cases of active termination of life without explicit request and it implies that involved physician does not issue a certificate of natural death, but reports the event to the municipal coroner by means of a completed list of some fifty points of attention.
One of the main points of criticism of the Dutch regulation of euthanasia concerns the question whether the notification procedure actually makes the practice of euthanasia verifiable. From the outset it appeared that only a minority of physicians - 25% of general practitioners and 35% of the specialists according the First Survey on Euthanasia (1990) - report cases of active termination of life to avoid legal problems and the questioning of the relatives of the patient.
In 1994, the Dutch government decided to have a new large-scale survey conducted as to the practice of euthanasia and the effectiveness of the notification procedure. This Second Survey on euthanasia, edited in 1995, shows: 1. a substantial increase has occurred in the number of cases of euthanasia; 2. a very little number of notification procedures has confirmed. Apart from the fundamental ethical objection to a plea of necessity in the case of life-terminating actions, it is apparent that in practice the notification procedure has not led also to effective control of euthanasia, according to Dutch legislator.
How to Cite
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.