Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword by Daniel Callahan
- Introduction
- 1 Euthanasia and the value of life
- 2 A philosophical case against euthanasia
- 3 The philosophical case against the philosophical case against euthanasia
- 4 The fragile case for euthanasia: a reply to John Harris
- 5 Final thoughts on final acts
- 6 Misunderstanding the case against euthanasia: response to Harris's first reply
- 7 Euthanasia: back to the future
- 8 The case for legalising voluntary euthanasia
- 9 Extracts from the Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics
- 10 Walton, Davies, Boyd and the legalization of euthanasia
- 11 Where there is hope, there is life: a view from the hospice
- 12 Letting vegetative patients die
- 13 A case for sometimes tube-feeding patients in persistent vegetative state
- 14 Dilemmas at life's end: a comparative legal perspective
- 15 Physician-assisted suicide: the last bridge to active voluntary euthanasia
- 16 Euthanasia in the Netherlands: sliding down the slippery slope?
- 17 Advance directives: a legal and ethical analysis
- 18 Theological aspects of euthanasia
- Index
16 - Euthanasia in the Netherlands: sliding down the slippery slope?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword by Daniel Callahan
- Introduction
- 1 Euthanasia and the value of life
- 2 A philosophical case against euthanasia
- 3 The philosophical case against the philosophical case against euthanasia
- 4 The fragile case for euthanasia: a reply to John Harris
- 5 Final thoughts on final acts
- 6 Misunderstanding the case against euthanasia: response to Harris's first reply
- 7 Euthanasia: back to the future
- 8 The case for legalising voluntary euthanasia
- 9 Extracts from the Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics
- 10 Walton, Davies, Boyd and the legalization of euthanasia
- 11 Where there is hope, there is life: a view from the hospice
- 12 Letting vegetative patients die
- 13 A case for sometimes tube-feeding patients in persistent vegetative state
- 14 Dilemmas at life's end: a comparative legal perspective
- 15 Physician-assisted suicide: the last bridge to active voluntary euthanasia
- 16 Euthanasia in the Netherlands: sliding down the slippery slope?
- 17 Advance directives: a legal and ethical analysis
- 18 Theological aspects of euthanasia
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
There is only one country in which euthanasia is officially condoned and widely practised: the Netherlands. Although euthanasia is proscribed by the Dutch Penal Code, the Dutch Supreme Court held in 1984 that a doctor who kills a patient may in certain circumstances successfully invoke the defence of necessity, also contained in the Code, to justify the killing. In the same year, the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) issued its members with guidelines for euthanasia. Since that time the lives of thousands of Dutch patients have been intentionally shortened by their doctors.
A requirement central to both the legal and medical guidelines has been the free and explicit request of the patient. Defenders of the guidelines have claimed that they permit voluntary euthanasia but not euthanasia without request; that they are sufficiently strict and precise to prevent any slide down a ‘slippery slope’ to euthanasia without request, and that there has been no evidence of any such slide in the Netherlands.
The question addressed in this chapter can be simply put: Does the Dutch experience of euthanasia lend any support to the claims of supporters of voluntary euthanasia that acceptance of voluntary euthanasia does not lead to acceptance of non–voluntary euthanasia or does it, rather, tend to support the claims of opponents of voluntary euthanasia that voluntary euthanasia leads down a ‘slippery slope’ to euthanasia without request?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Euthanasia ExaminedEthical, Clinical and Legal Perspectives, pp. 261 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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