An article on the Dutch taste for euthanasia...
While surfing on the site of the IAETF (International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force), http://www.internationaltaskforce.org , I found an interesting link to an opinion column by Bob Barr (a former Republican representative of Georgia, US), "Euthanasia... or a Dutch treat". You can read it here: http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20041226-123251-5015r.htm
His parallel with involuntary commitment to psychiatric asylums seems to me quite illustrative and striking of the way in which bioethics and basic human rights tend to interact always more today. When Barr stresses that the preservation of life is the paramount objective of any doctor, that lets me think about my own studies of bioethics in a Catholic university (the UCL as mentionned in my previous post). Well, "Catholic university" evokes Evangelium vitae, and its worry for the preservation of life... But I had it all wrong. I shared some courses of ethics with students in their third year of medicine. The first thing lecturers told them was to forget about preserving life at all costs! There was no mystery that one of the above-mentioned lecturers was a strong proponent of active euthanasia within this "Catholic" hospital. Thus, doctor students have their whole concepts of saving life taken away from them and replaced with such abstract and contextually dangerous notions as preseving the autonomy of the patient, cost compression, economy of health care... at the end, the young students are ready to euthanize any patient who is feeling pain and who asks an euthanasia because his pain is not adequately treated!
Is this type of very special lessons being given also in other faculties of medicine, around the world, or is that specific to the "land of compromise", Belgium?... and its sister, Netherlands.
His parallel with involuntary commitment to psychiatric asylums seems to me quite illustrative and striking of the way in which bioethics and basic human rights tend to interact always more today. When Barr stresses that the preservation of life is the paramount objective of any doctor, that lets me think about my own studies of bioethics in a Catholic university (the UCL as mentionned in my previous post). Well, "Catholic university" evokes Evangelium vitae, and its worry for the preservation of life... But I had it all wrong. I shared some courses of ethics with students in their third year of medicine. The first thing lecturers told them was to forget about preserving life at all costs! There was no mystery that one of the above-mentioned lecturers was a strong proponent of active euthanasia within this "Catholic" hospital. Thus, doctor students have their whole concepts of saving life taken away from them and replaced with such abstract and contextually dangerous notions as preseving the autonomy of the patient, cost compression, economy of health care... at the end, the young students are ready to euthanize any patient who is feeling pain and who asks an euthanasia because his pain is not adequately treated!
Is this type of very special lessons being given also in other faculties of medicine, around the world, or is that specific to the "land of compromise", Belgium?... and its sister, Netherlands.
posted by dawnofeurope | 5:24 pm
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