Thanks to Clare Allan (‘Incurable’ is no justification for ending life, 1 June) for highlighting the continuing “mission creep” in the Netherlands since the passing of the 2002 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act. Euthanasia is clearly one thing when viewed from the deathbed of a terminally ill patient but, equally clearly, it is something very different when applied to a young adult with seemingly incurable psychiatric distress. As Allan says, with psychiatrists willing to recommend and carry out euthanasia for psychiatric reasons, who needs self-harm?
Dutch journalist Gerbert van Loenen shows in his book Do You Call This a Life? Blurred Boundaries in the Netherlands’ Right-to-Die Laws that, although euthanasia activism begins with the wish to help suffering people of sound mind to achieve control in ending their torment, it never stops there. In both the Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium, once the barrier of legislation is passed, medically assisted dying takes on a dynamic of its own and extends beyond the original intent, despite earlier explicit assurances that this would not happen. As a disillusioned former member of a Dutch regional euthanasia review board has said: “Don’t go there!”
Robert Twycross
Emeritus clinical reader in palliative medicine, Oxford University
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