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Attitudes of Dutch General Practitioners and Nursing Home Physicians to Active Voluntary Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide-Reply
Bregje D. Onwuteaka-Philipsen, MSc;
Martien T. Muller, PhD;
Gerrit van der Wal, MD, PhD
Vrije Universiteit, Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Arch Fam Med. 1996;5(9):495-496.
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In reply
The reaction of Dr Hammer shows concern for the Dutch experience with EAS. However, his comment is based on some misconceptions. Reading the primary data source, it becomes clear that the Committee to Investigate the Medical Practice Concerning Euthanasia (the "Remmelink Study") did not report that there are 25306 cases of euthanasia annually in the Netherlands.1,2 That figure is arrived at by reordering the data, adding up voluntary active euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, lifeterminating acts without explicit request of the patient, a large part of the decisions to alleviate pain and symptoms, and nontreatment decisions and defining it all as euthanasia. The problems and confusion that are a result of this reordering are well described by the researchers of the Remmelink study.3 The Remmelink study did not report 5900 cases of involuntary euthanasia. They did report about 1000 cases of life-terminating acts without explicit patient request. Preferring this terminology
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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