Baby euthanasia plan urged
2004-12-13 22:35
The Hague - Doctors in The Netherlands are calling for a domestic legal framework that would allow them to end the lives of new-born babies suffering unbearable pain from incurable diseases, a move that reopens the debate on the controversial issue of euthanasia.
"It's time to be honest about the unbearable suffering endured by new-borns with no hope of a future," said Eduard Verhagen, a paediatrician at the university hospital in the northern town of Groningen on Monday.
"All over the world doctors end lives discreetly out of compassion, without any kind of regulation," he said.
The appeal has been signed by doctors from the country's eight university hospitals.
It calls for a committee of experts to be set up to define the specific criteria that would govern euthanasia so that doctors could work with fixed guidelines.
"It is in the interest of new-borns who have to endure unbearable suffering that we draw up a nationwide protocol that allows each paediatrician to treat this delicate question with due care," said Verhagen.
The protocol would concern only about 600 infants in the world - and between 10 and 15 in The Netherlands - who are born for example without a brain, or with malformations that would require countless operations simply to achieve a temporary result that would not even relieve the child's suffering.
"These operations would not ease the pain. Moreover, the child would suffer such unbearable pain that it has to be constantly anaesthetised," said Verhagen.
The announcement re-opens the controversial question of euthanasia, which has been legal in The Netherlands since April 1
2002 for people aged 16 and above.
Groningen university hospital, with the agreement with the Dutch legal authorities, has already drawn up a document setting out the circumstances in which euthanasia of new-born babies could be justified.
The disease must be incurable and impossible to relieve using medicines or surgery, parents must give their consent, the child must have no prospects of a future and the act of euthanasia must be carried out with meticulous care.
- SAPA