Euthanasia Policy In The Netherlands, Medicine And Humanities Emerging Definitions
By addebook • Jun 27th, 2009 • Category: Medicine
Euthanasia Policy In The Netherlands, Medicine And Humanities Emerging Definitions
by: Bert Keizer
en | Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley
R20090622G
Euthanasia Policy In The Netherlands, Medicine And Humanities Emerging Definitions
Contributors:
Dr. Bert Keizer
Elizabeth Dungan
Oran Franco
Sandra Gilbert
Christina Gillis
Jodi Halpern
Thomas Laqueur
Guy Micco
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Publisher: Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley
Published: April 2005
Pages: 54
Synopsis:
n March 2004, in collaboration with the Center for Medicine, Humanities, and Law, the Townsend Center sponsored a week-long residency with Dutch physician and writer Bert Keizer. Dr. Keizer is particularly known for his book, Dancing with Mr. D., a personal account of his work with the terminally ill in an Amsterdam critical care facility.
Commentary is provided by Michael Rabow (physician in the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco), and Patricia Benner (RN, PhD, FAAN, Chairperson and Professor of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Thelma Cook Endowed Chair in Ethics and Spirituality at UC San Francisco).
excerpt:
I will distinguish three stages in the history of euthanasia in Holland in the last 30 years a history that evolved from initial tentative clumsiness to the now accepted legal structure. There is plenty of comment within Holland about the nature of these proceedings but the internal debate rarely reaches that particularly abusive level often encountered in the international arena where Dutch euthanasia policy is usually met with unrelenting disdain.
I am not in the exporting business and would like to emphasize that I am not here to promote anything. I merely wish to inform you as honestly as I can about certain aspects of the tremendous difficulty of dying well. It’s a difficulty well worth thinking about, because, though I said I would refrain from statistics, I think it might be helpful to remind you of the percentage of patients who ultimately die. It is 100%, in Europe, at least, and I have every reason to believe that the same percentage obtains here. Before entering into details I must offer you a definition: in the Netherlands we use the term euthanasia when a patient is being handed or administered, at his or her explicit request, a lethal dose of medication in order to end his or her life. For the purpose of this talk, physician assisted suicide is included in the definition. It is allowed by law under certain narrowly prescribed conditions into which we shall enter later.
In Holland, before 1980 roughly speaking, you could describe the proceedings around deathbeds ending in euthanasia as belonging to the underground period. One of the more fascinating questions, the answer to which can only be speculative, is why there was no question of euthanasia in the fifties, when there was just as much dying going on. Several factors account for this: important changes in doctors, patients and diseases.
In the first half of the twentieth century doctors typically came from the higher social levels, and this social distance aggravated the inequality that is always there between a doctor and his or her patient. It is almost unthinkable that a patient under those circumstances would dare to utter a plea for death; it would have been seen as an act of defiance, or insubordination, and would never have been interpreted as a cry for help.
Contents
Euthanasia Policy In The Netherlands
Medicine And Humanities [e]merging Definitions
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Euthanasia Policy In The Netherlands
Commentary
Open Discussion
Roundtable Discussion
About The Speakers
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