Word: hollande
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...touch of bravura was uniquely Swarttouw, but the candor about voluntary death was typically Dutch. While euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide remain taboo subjects in much of Europe and are contentious topics in the U.S., they have been openly debated and researched for more than 20 years in Holland, which has a record of pragmatism in dealing with thorny social issues like drugs and abortion. Euthanasia is still, under Dutch law, a crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison. But in fact, the Netherlands has tolerated the practice for more than a decade, and the number of cases...
...major independent study published late last year on assisted suicide (in which the doctor gives a patient the means to end life) and euthanasia (in which the doctor terminates life at the patient's request). It concluded that there were about 3,600 cases in 1995 in Holland (pop. 15.5 million), a jump from the 2,700 cases estimated in 1990. Another 900 deaths fell into the troublesome category of "termination of life without the request of the patient...
Both supporters and critics of assisted suicide and euthanasia point to Holland to bolster their arguments. "It's terrible medicine," says psychiatrist Herbert Hendin, executive director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in New York City, whose recent book, Seduced by Death, brands Dutch policy a failure. The Dutch establishment, however, was reassured by the latest study. To address the biggest problem it found--more than half the doctors didn't report euthanasia cases to the public prosecutor as required--the government proposes that instead, doctors would report to a panel of legal, medical and ethical experts to make...
...Dutch claim their system has built-in safeguards. For one, most people still rely on a family doctor,which reduces the risk of routinized euthanasia by an impersonal system. For another, Holland's welfare state is alive and well. Nursing care for the chronically ill is good, and everyone's medical expenses are covered, so finances are not a factor...
...either." The study found that about half the patients had earlier discussed euthanasia. Many were in great pain in the last days of life and were given morphine, which eased their suffering but also hastened death. The government has proposed tighter controls of these nonrequest cases, but practitioners say Holland's candor has merely thrown light on a common, if little discussed, medical practice. "Doctors all over the world shorten the lives of patients under the cover of pain reduction, and only we are stupid enough to talk about it," says Bert Keizer, a nursing home physician in Amsterdam, whose...