
The Euthanasia That Wasn’t - DoreenMichele
https://www.politico.eu/article/noa-pothoven-euthanasia-that-wasnt-suicide-mental-illness-anorexia/
======
anvandare
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself
doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that
life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems
suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain
unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will
eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about
people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great
height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing
speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of
falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s
flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the
slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror
of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling
‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to
have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way
beyond falling.”

\- David Foster Wallace

The essence of Liberty is the ownership of one's own life. You owe it to no
one - not even a hypothetical Future Self - to stay alive at all costs. Just
as all humans have the right to live with dignity and without pain, we have
the right to die in the same manner. I hope that's acknowledged one day.

~~~
cm2012
If your happy but very drunk friend wanted to tapdance on the edge of a tall
building, would you restrain them if necessary? Or if someone high on shrooms
was trying to drink bleach?

A suicidal mind is often one caught in the temporary throes of delusion and
irrationality, even if it comes from internal wiring going haywire instead of
external substances.

Preventing someone from killing themselves is in their best interest most of
the time for that reason. Suicidal impulses are most often fleeting relative
to normal lifespan.

My wife tried to kill herself a few times when we were younger - I wrestled
knives from her hands and had to get a safe for pills (which she agreed to in
her better states). With therapy and medicine, she is very, very happy to be
alive now.

~~~
DoreenMichele
There are many people for whom life is a living hell with no hope of escape
other than to end it. Insisting they live amounts to serving as their warden
and torturer.

If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility
for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live.

I'm quite open about my long history of being suicidal and the various
underlying reasons why. People on the internet often want to tell me "chin up,
tally ho, here's a suicide hotline number." They generally don't want to do
anything whatsoever to help with any of the actual underlying problems.

In fact, they usually make me feel like they are merely using me as their
"good deed for the day" to make themselves feel like good people. It generally
pisses me off and makes me feel crapped all over.

I'm pro right to die, but this article casts light on how very complicated the
issue is. I would be horrified to learn that "I got raped and now want to die"
is some new standard for helping women kill themselves. I just can't even
begin to come up with the words for how mixed my feelings are about this
girl's story.

~~~
candiodari
> If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility
> for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they
> live.

Exactly. People, even kids, kill themselves because of "lack of perspective".
Lack of a (reasonable) future. Lack of any reasonable hope for change. People
aren't stupid and mental illnesses (the non-medical ones) don't actually
prevent thinking. That means the first thing to realize is that a desire to
kill yourself _isn 't_ illogical. Maybe it's a mistake _but maybe it isn 't_.

Which of course is terrible and of course absolutely not what society expects
of help. Here's this kid. She's broken. Find the miswire in her brain, cut it
or something, and bring them back fixed. And then you read the story of the
kid. Was "diagnosed" with Autism by a teacher with no psychological skills
whatsoever. From that point on systematically increasing repression was used
against this kid, and of course as a psychological/social worker you cannot
change their situation. That, youth services will not let a psychiatrist do.
They need to be fixed and accept whatever "help" other people feel the need to
provide, decided by whoever gets put in charge by the government (they "just
happen" to never ever be the people who actually take responsibility for the
child). That's your only function. Oh and by the way, if you can't do it in 6
weeks (can be up to 16), the kid will be violently taken away by the police,
in cuffs, and someone else gets that job. Oh, and if they commit suicide in
your clinic, they'll bankrupt you and maybe you'll go to jail. Good luck !

So the problem in this girl's case is not just that her conclusion, that there
was no perspective on a better life ... well let's just say it wasn't a
particularly stupid or obviously wrong assessment of her situation. The things
she didn't have control over weren't getting better over time. And she
tolerated being treated like that "for her protection" for at least 3 years
... Do you really feel you'd last that long ? Kids are actually far more
resilient than adults when it comes to being suicidal, but enough punishment
("help" provided involuntarily, like in the case being discussed here) will
get the better of them soon. Every 3 months you get moved somewhere else, in
cuffs, and the next thing is tried on you. That might be good, it might also
be 12 weeks in an isolation cell. You just don't know. Hell, because they just
take whatever is available right at the moment they move you (because your
current placement ends you have to leave, doesn't mean they have somewhere
else for you to go). So the social workers, your parents, even the juvenile
judge _also_ doesn't know, except perhaps a day or so in advance. Good luck
feeling optimistic about your future.

So of course youth services _itself_ was the cause of the lack of perspective.
"Safety" for the child, imposing safety on her is what killed her. Escalating
to heavier and heavier repression every time. As soon as she worsened in care
someone should of course have pressed the abort button, EVEN knowing she was
cutting herself or suicidal. Send her home and say she can stay there unless
she chooses otherwise. Why ? To prevent doing more damage. To make it clear
that her home was still there, and that the situation really is salvageable.
But if you as a social worker or psychiatrist take that chance, and the result
is that it was too late, and the kid does commit suicide (or worse: their
parents or someone they're exposed to back home takes advantage of the
situation), you'll be eaten alive by society. So nobody does. Everybody avoids
responsibility, and thus taking chances on _not_ treating kids is barely ever
done. The odds are actually in favor of doing this. Even people who've tried
to commit suicide, only 3% actually follow through with it, meaning the
symptom disappears in 97% of cases, which is far better than treatment
accomplishes.

About 400 kids are placed (which means locked up against the will of parents
and child) "for their safety" for every 1 case of actual abuse in the
Netherlands. Social workers build cases against these kids that aren't checked
for accuracy (it is an actual policy for them to write down everything they
hear, and to never check), there is no defense possible, there are children's
rights, but no way to sue child services if they are violated, so there might
as well not be. There is no actual appeal process against the youth court
(technically there is, but whatever "protection measure" they put forth is
always immediately executed, appeal or not, nor is it canceled on a succesfull
appeal, it is re-evaluated by the original judge (after, of course, another
waiting period). This heavily punishes appeal since if an appeal is filed, no
adjustments (such as visitation by your parents, or a friend, or more phone
numbers you get to call, or ...) are possible until the appeal is heard,
sometimes years later)

It is very clear that at this point the system damages many more kids than it
helps.

BUT there is money being handed out. For example, if you have a handicapped
kid, and you need help paying for a wheelchair, this is done through youth
services, with "pgb" (meaning money that "follows the kid"). Parents can even
use this money to pay themselves (very badly I might add, but it's something)
for watching the kid if the care required is heavy enough that the kid can't
be left alone. Or to get them after school lessons for free. Or ... Also
schools, institutions, even things like children's farms can get extra money
through the system, if they get "problem" kids assigned to them, and so kids
are being forced into it, sometimes by their own parents. But where the real
damage is done is where social workers are both being made responsible for
deciding on care, and paid for providing care.

The perverse incentive is of course that one can easily see that
institutions', schools', social workers', ... optimal strategy is to "treat"
kids that are normal to begin with, diagnose them with something like
"autism", and "treat" them. How many social workers, how many schools, how
many institutions do this ? Hopefully not too many, but it's equally obvious
that it's rather unlikely to be zero.

This has resulted in that apparently a solid 11% of Dutch kids have a serious
psychiatric problem necessitating professional aid in any one year.
Internationally, it's not even 3% (and that number is over 18 years). That
number is rising. Just for autism, 2.5% of Dutch kids are diagnosed with it,
whereas international numbers are between 0.6% and 1%.

~~~
pas
Damn. At first I wanted to skip this probably unnecessary long comment. But
damn.

It's so scary to see that our systems are full of misaligned incentives, a
classic economics problem. The fucking textbook agent-principal dilemma. And
nothing changes. (Or just so very slowly.)

------
DoreenMichele
There are many things to talk about here, but this is part of why I posted
this to Hacker News:

 _The deeply shocking story on such a controversial issue was irresistible,
and became a top news item all over the world overnight. Pothoven’s name was
soon trending on Twitter in Italy. News reports repeating the false claims
were published from Australia to India to the United States._

Yes, the article touches on many things, many of which are hot button topics.
But the actual title of this piece is really about how the story was
misreported in many countries due to it's controversial nature. It was click
bait to the max.

I posted a long comment earlier and deleted it. I'm quite open about my
history of attempted suicide, having been sexually assaulted, etc.

I think it is possible to heal. I don't know that I know how to really talk
about that. I do know that the widespread meme that such things are simply
_unfixable_ is part of the problem.

There doesn't seem to be any good way to talk about that either. So I'm going
to stop here.

~~~
lanevorockz
Real story is even more horrific than just euthanasia. I think that to an
extent the click bait value takes priority when it gets to the media. Whatever
makes people click on it.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't agree. I would be vastly more horrified to learn that a minor was
euthanized -- that an institution, in compliance with the law, put a young
girl to death as a consequence of her being sexually abused.

That smacks of "Let's not bother to go after pedophiles. Their fine. Let's
just start putting their victims to death to conveniently sweep this under the
rug."

That's far worse than the horrifying stuff going on in the Catholic Church
where a grown man can rape and impregnate his 9 year old step daughter and the
church says he's all good, but the girl was excommunicated for getting an
abortion to protect her life in the face of carrying twins while just a tiny
child herself.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion_case)

Sex crimes are particularly hard to deal with. People sometimes say they would
like the death sentence for rape, but if you do that, you can count on rape
victims being routinely murdered to silence them and protect the life of the
rapist.

This is a hard, hard problem to solve. I would be terrified to learn that the
Dutch government, which has a positive reputation globally for it's track
record on women's rights, was fine with putting a child to death because grown
men raped her.

I cannot possibly overstate how deeply dystopian and terrible that news would
be.

------
markdown
This story kinda reminded me about Mark Rife:

> “Last Thursday, a guy I went to college with, Mark Rife, committed suicide.
> As I understand the story, three years ago his wife Sarah died due to
> complications from a fall off a 75 foot waterfall. She fell; he dove in
> after her. Against all odds, they thought she had recovered. Life had
> returned to some degree of normal; but then six months later, she died in
> her sleep. Mark was devastated.

> In a video he left behind, Mark describes leaving Sarah’s funeral, driving
> who knows where and simply wanting to die — but he remembered the time they
> watched the film Juliet and Her Romeo, a film he loved, and he remembered
> Sarah’s question: “Do you think Romeo would have still killed himself if
> he’d waited 1,000 days?”

> So, Mark went on a 1,000 day odyssey, with funds from Sarah’s life insurance
> policy, to give him time to see if his choice would still be the same. Would
> he still want to kill himself? Mark traveled, explored, met knew people. He
> says he “followed every impulse.” Mark had been a pastor in Hawaii, and he
> left his life behind.”

> Long story short, after 1000 days of living and exploring 22 countries
> around the world, Mark Rife decided that he DID want to kill himself. He
> didn’t want to live in a world without Sarah and he was out.

[http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/the-1000-days-of-
mark](http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/the-1000-days-of-mark)

Mark blogged every step of his 1000 days of travelling and seeking happiness.
Tumblr deleted his blog the day he killed himself. To their credit, Vimeo left
his video up [https://vimeo.com/27856790](https://vimeo.com/27856790)

~~~
bubblewrap
If he was a pastor, he probably believed in an afterlife, hoping to be
together with Sarah again?

I also remember the story of a guy killing his family after a divorce, hoping
to be together with his children again in the afterlife.

Lies can kill...

~~~
markdown
> If he was a pastor, he probably believed in an afterlife, hoping to be
> together with Sarah again?

Only if he thought she was in hell. A pastor would know that you can't commit
suicide and enter heaven.

~~~
garmega
That's not biblical. Some Christians believe that, but it's not anywhere in
the Bible. In fact Samson committed suicide and mass killing in his final act
and Hebrews 11 tells us he is one of those in heaven.

------
skrebbel
I'm confused that there are no comments here yet about the actual topic at
hand: international media willfully flat out lying about what happened.
Basically, fake news in mainstream media.

Sure, the Daily Mail isn't particularly a quality newspaper, but a lie about
an entire country's medical practices is quite a bit different than a lie
about some aristocrat's love life. And even then, aren't eg BBC Radio or the
Independent supposed to be quality news sources? The latter writes "A 17-year-
old girl who was raped as a child has ended her own life through legal
euthanasia in the Netherlands" [0]. What's going on here?

This is the kind of stuff that we're being told only fringe media do, the
rogue blogs that will do anything that heats up facebook outrage, for ad
impressions - the kind whose business model is to invent lies for maximum
shares. This story isn't about euthanesia or suicide. It's about how the
mainstream media took a note from the invent-outrageous-lies-blogs' playbook.
About how it's totally OK now for BBC Radio 4 to report flat out lies, if only
it gets people talking about BBC Radio.

This is a serious problem. While everybody is falling over each other to blame
Facebook for undermining democracy, apparently the likes of the BBC and the
Independent are slowly transforming into the real perpetrators. Sure, I know
why: their journalists are paid by the click just as any other. But apparently
any sort of fact checking went out the window there, and I wonder whether
that's a viable business strategy in the long term. Why consume "quality"
media if the quality is the same as the inflammatory rando blog post your aunt
just shared on Facebook?

I recognize that journalism is under a lot of financial pressure, but if lies
like these get willfully spread by people who should know better, what's left?
How do we know that this Politico article isn't a lie as well?

I'm deeply troubled by all this.

[0]
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/euthanasia-c...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/euthanasia-
clinic-suicide-depression-rape-anorexia-netherlands-teenager-noa-
pothoven-a8944356.html) the headline I quoted is from the video. There's a
little "oops we might've lied hihi" on the bottom of the article but they
couldn't be bothered to fix the video because hey, clicks lol.

~~~
ahje
This. When I first saw stuff about this popping up on various sites (including
meme-sites, where it was posted with some kind of anti-immigrant agenda), I
thought that it sounded to wierd to be true and decided to look it up. A few
internet searches later confirmed it was, indeed, fake news being spread by
mainstream media.

Calling this a serious problem is an understatement. It's an outright
disaster, and it only adds to the already growing public distrust of the
media.

------
Udo
When I was about 17, one evening a friend from school with suspected
borderline personality disorder called me and told me that she had "taken some
pills, a lot of pills". I immediately went over to her house since it was in
the neighborhood. She had already induced vomitting, but said that she was
beginning to feel dizzy. Under the circumstances, we called an ambulance.
Calling help was actually the scariest thing about the whole ordeal, because
she suspected (I believe rightly so) that once you get caught in The System,
you can get trapped in it for good. I remember feeling guilty about calling
the ambulance, but it seemed too risky to not do it. In the hospital, it
initially looked like our fears were confirmed. Treatment by the staff was
horrid. However, after youth services interviewed my friend, she was let go,
mainly because she was almost of legal age and because she affirmed many times
that she regretted the suicide attempt. She ended up moving in with us for a
few months, to get away from home and to sort everything out. It worked. As
far as I know (we lost touch after school) she went on to live a full and
'normal' life.

There is no question in my mind that it would have turned out very differently
if she had been just one year younger at the time. She would have gotten
trapped in The System, no doubt exacerbating her suicidal feelings, both
because the people in charge of 'protecting' these kids don't seem to be
particularly kid-friendly, and because she was prone to clashing with
authority figures (who, it goes without saying, tend to be petty and
capricious). On more than one occasion my friend was told that she had engaged
in an "illegal act" for attempting suicide - that's not helpful to say the
least.

I have to admit though that I'm having trouble accepting suicidal ideation,
especially in minors, without at least exploring treatment options. We as a
society have an obligation to not make suffering worse, and we often seem to
fail this basic test.

------
hestipod
I have said this more than once here, and hate how much it defines my life so
imagine people might be annoyed by seeing it again, but I have been suicidal
for a long time because of medical errors and the ensuing heath/life issues. I
don't want to be. Nobody who is wants to be. Some people SAY they want more
than anything to be gone but at the end of the thread, if you pull hard
enough, they just want the suffering, whatever it is, to end. I have been in
and out of discussion forums on the topic and I have met countless people like
this young woman who are desperate and in pain and cannot get enough help that
actually makes a difference to go either direction, into or out of life. Many
of them have tried everything they can access and have no realistic chance for
improvement, but society has decided its not your right to stop if it becomes
too much. These people often end up using desperate and dangerous methods and
fail/end up worse off. I've also seen the aftermath where their families react
in anger to those who discuss the topic freely and blame them for their loss,
as if the person wouldn't have ended their life were it not spoken aloud, when
the truth is being able to and being understood is the only peace most of them
have had for a long time.

I know all the arguments, and even used some of them when I was younger and
more naive. Now that I am here I see things differently. Someone I cared very
deeply about reached the end of their rope this past winter and nothing and
nobody short of locking them in a box was going to stop them, and even then
they probably would have found a way. I keep thinking I should have realized
how imminent it was and done "something", but for the life of me I can't think
what, as they had tried the things available and nothing helped. What they
needed was more than society was willing to give and that's the case for the
majority of people I have seen go. Very few are lost no matter what with no
conceivable way to survive...its just not available to them. Yet that same
society tells them they cannot opt out. At what point do we stop trying to
make people stay alive and suffering and give them safe and sure ways out?
It's not an easy question. One that isn't as simple as "legalize suicide" and
done. But there is a cultural idea in the West that it's NEVER the answer,
that it always gets better, and those things are not true either. As I feel
the day creeping closer for me I know I will have to deal with it alone and
afraid, secretly, and with my best homemade effort, since there is no other
way out of this life, and I cannot seem to solve the problems that would allow
me to stay in it. I'd just ask people to put themselves in the shoes of people
in such a situation, and think about how it would feel if you were at the
literal end of your rope and people fought to keep you here and suffering.
Nobody would want that...but like so much in life we don't extend such truths
to others.

~~~
ndiscussion
Just wanted to say that I respect your freedom. Life can be far more cruel
than most people can imagine. Life for most people seems to be really happy-
go-lucky, and anything else is an existential threat that must be blocked out.

I see your plight, and I give you the freedom to feel how you feel (not that
you ever needed it from me...)

~~~
hestipod
Nail on head. For the majority of people, if it makes them feel afraid,
threatened, confused...then it is something to be ignored or attacked. That's
a sad truth I have learned through this experience. The empathetic and caring
people are, despite most people imagining themselves as one, are not the
majority by a longshot.

------
candiodari
Not euthanasia, but how would you call it ?

I mean sure, was she given a lethal injection in a clinic ? Well, no. Is this
not euthanasia ? Why the hell not ?

1) the girl is in fact dead

2) because she wanted to die (after being locked up in youth services for
years, including months in an isolation cell)

3) the "original event" is that she was ("probably") raped at school.
Repeatedly. She has never divulged what actually happened.

4) according to her own words, she has been locked up in ~30 different
institutions in something like 6 years. In at least a few cases against _her_
will _and_ against the will of her parents. [1]

In one case, this was done because she could not immediately be treated by a
psychiatric clinic, where youth services then saw fit to lock her in an
institution (without school, without access to family, ...). She was not
suicidal before this, and became suicidal here.

In several other cases she claims it was because psychiatric or youth services
"help" did not find her cooperative or make enough progress and then sent her
to be locked up, because that's just what they do (loosely translated from her
post linked below). She also claims she met a great deal other youths that
were in a similar situation (not able to be treated, and then locked up
instead).

She claims she was put into an isolation cell for months, constantly scolded
by the employees of youth services, punished unfairly and arbitrarily and that
generally she left youth services' care in much worse shape than she entered,
when looking for help.

5) she was assisted in committing suicide, even if that was not active
suicide, but rather starving herself out.

She's written a book about it. "Winning or learning" (Winnen of Leren) by Noa
Pothoven. Dutch book. About experiencing trauma at a young age. About the
enormously negative influence the Dutch help system had in her life. No
translation available.

[1]
[https://www.hsleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/hsl/lectorat...](https://www.hsleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/hsl/lectoraten/residentiele-
jeugdzorg/nieuws/blog-noa-020419.pdf) (in Dutch)

~~~
ajross
> Is this not euthanasia ? Why the hell not ?

Because it's a suicide. We already have a word for what happens to people who
die after refusing food.

In fact the only reason the word "euthanasia" is being considered at all is
because before she died she ended up in an end of life clinic that also
provided assisted death services to other patients.

This is exactly like accusing someone of having had an abortion because their
miscarriage was diagnosed at Planned Parenthood. (A scenario, I point out,
that now seems a whole lot more likely given the horrifying way this is being
portrayed in the right wing press)

~~~
drilldrive
Hmm, a miscarriage is not an intentional act, whereas there is intention in
this case. It is moreso analagous to someone at planned parenthood not
authorizing an abortion but providing either direct or indirect assistance for
the woman to perform the abortion herself.

~~~
ajross
I'm sorry, what on earth is "indirect assistance" to someone refusing to eat?

What people seem to be conflating here is the idea of involuntary care and
"euthanasia". It's true that sometimes courts will allow doctor's to force-
feed patients through an IV. For various reasons (I'm no expert on Danish
medical law) that didn't happen here. And that is a controversial area of
medical ethics and worth discussing calmly and rationally.

But to freak out, shriek on social media and HN, and call this "euthanasia" is
straight up ridiculous spin. And the ONLY reason this story even has legs is
because of the facility. If this happened in a hospital it would be a routine
tragedy and not a political flytrap for right wing moralists.

~~~
candiodari
> I'm sorry, what on earth is "indirect assistance" to someone refusing to
> eat?

Making them comfortable. Taking care of other needs (washing, teeth, ...).
Some level of pain medication. General support.

> It's true that sometimes courts will allow doctor's to force-feed patients
> through an IV

Which _did_ happen in this case by the way (with a stomach probe not with an
IV). For years. Including months spent by this girl in isolation cells.

> routine tragedy and not a political flytrap for right wing moralists.

I'm not sure I've seen this used as a right wing moral cause (I don't
understand why you'd say this, it's not about immigration, it's not about
money, ...).

Or if it's just that the state and the help system spectacularly failing this
girl (in fact arguably causing her suicidal tendencies while attempting to
solve other problems with brutal repression). Yeah perhaps. It did happen
though.

~~~
ajross
All of which are excellent moral questions and absolutely worth debating
without senselessly and incorrectly accusing the Dutch (I wrote Danish above,
sorry) government of euthanizing teenagers.

If you want to talk about care, talk about care. Medical ethics is a hard
problem.

~~~
candiodari
Several of the government's decisions relating to locking up this girl were
very likely taken for financial reasons, where brutal repression against the
will of the girl and the parents was used to avoid difficulties for government
employees or even purely for financial reasons of institutions.

There is a very good basis in this case to accuse the Dutch government, more
specifically the Dutch youth care system, even of murdering this girl. By
torturing her for years, at times for self-serving reasons, until she took her
own life.

------
Grue3
That's splitting hairs. Not preventing a person from killing themselves is
morally equivalent to being complicit in their death. I hate seeing when
people who commit suicide get blamed for their death: they're mentally ill,
they can't help themselves. People who could've helped them should be blamed
instead.

~~~
balzss
But there are times when no one could have helped. Finding someone to blame
doesn't seem to be a thing that we should aim for. It can be even harmful in
certain situations e.g. a mother/father who lost their child even though they
have done everything they could to prevent that. That's tragic in and of
itself. Finding someone to blame would only worsen the situation.

------
mlang23
Everyone should have the right to terminate their life. We kill animals that
lived with us as pets because we dont want to see them suffer, but we refuse
to do anything and have someone starve themselves to death just because...
well, I will never get it.

~~~
gnode
While I am a strong exponent of individual freedom, I think people should be
to some extent protected from making decisions which are against their own
interest, especially when their decisions are permanent and pathologically
affected. In some cases, I think it can be rightly determined death is in
someone's interest, such as incurable suffering. Anxiety and depression, while
often severely painful, are frequently possible to recover from.

We tend to euthanize animals when we can't justify the expenditure of treating
them. We generally view fellow humans as having an inherent right to our best
efforts to help them, rather than in terms of their value to us.

------
jillesvangurp
For me reading foreign media writing about a topic that is entirely
uncontroversial in the Netherlands, i.e. Euthanasia, is a bit weird.

I have relatives who are doctors and perform legal euthanasia as part of their
job. I've heard their stories and they are without exception a combination of
very sad and heart warming. This is not exactly the most popular part of their
job and it usually comes at the end of a very long process. To give you the
context, euthanasia is legal but it comes with a lot of strings attached.
Basically it's only legal if a very strict protocol is followed. It's at their
discretion to say no and not a right but a privilege for the patient. There
are always second opinions involved. This protocol exists to both protect the
doctors involved and the patients involved. It's biased towards a "no,
unless". Not following it can land you in court with murder charges or lose
you your medical license.

I also have relatives and friends who have died after volunteering to die this
way; and I've had the conversation with my parents about their wishes when
this becomes a topic for them. They are both healthy and fine now but well
aware that this can change. They regularly attend funerals of people they know
where the person died after euthanasia. This stuff is completely normal for
several decades now and there is no political support whatsoever for rolling
back the rules around this. Even moderate christian parties have pretty much
given up on this topic as lots of their own members would choose this option.
Most people don't actually like the prospect of a long painful death.

Simply put, euthanasia is a popular choice among patients and less so for the
doctors that help them who are biased towards addressing the suffering. People
actually notarize their decisions to agree to euthanasia and people like my
parents have a lot of anxiety about ending up in situation where they'd want
this but it would no longer be possible due to their degraded mental state.

Euthanasia is actually quite common elsewhere but you might be thinking of it
in terms of the traditional euphemisms that exist to protect the doctor and
relatives involved. More traditional ways of euthanasia that are common in
other countries involve sedation, stopping treatment, or simply "allowing
someone to die", which is a euphemism for drugging them into a coma and then
deliberately not feeding them. Also there's the ever popular morphine overdose
and a few other options where somebody puts their finger on the scale. It all
amounts to deliberate acts that result in the patient dying. As this is highly
illegal nobody talks about this openly. For the same reason it's hard to get
solid numbers on this. But considering that everyone dies and that several of
the leading causes of death are quite nasty towards the end, you can make some
deductions.

What happened in my country was recognizing that this kind of thing was quite
common and exposed the doctors involved legally in a way that felt very wrong
and unreasonable as basically all they were doing was respecting the patients
wishes. So, we fixed it to ensure it gets done properly or not at all.

------
mooseburger
This is the most aggressively anti-human thing I have ever seen, possibly even
more than ISIS or cartel executions, because at least the perpetrators of
those atrocities know that they are doing evil, even if they're unrepentant,
which is more than can be said of the doctors in this situation.

I have been suicidally depressed, institutionalized. I'm better now. I suppose
if I actually attempted to kill myself, but failed, paramedics that find me
ought to let me go, or perhaps even finish me off if, say, I am in agony due
to the method I used? Why wouldn't they, since after all, I've clearly chosen
to die of my own free will? Yet, I now know that I was mistaken during my
depression. Life is not about hedonism, not about maximizing pleasure
experienced, which inevitably, inexorably, leads one to the conclusion that if
there's just not a lot of enjoyment in one's life, and this has been
persistent, then perhaps checking out is a good idea?

The path an individual life may take is unknowable, both to society and to an
individual themself, even if the individual has attempted suicide. Negate
this, and all human rights are instantly negated, as now all there is, is
predicting who might be better off dead, as there is after all, no point in
prolonging their existence, and they should be encouraged or gently nudged to
at least consider the path of least suffering, because this will end their
pain and decrease the overall suffering of the humanity. This is all because
we have deluded ourselves into thinking that we and they know how their lives
will play out. We do not, and no one knows, and therefore they must have
certain rights, to maximize the near infinite potentiality of the individual
human.

Society and government must not ever approve of this. I didn't believe
euthanasia (and this is euthanasia, the real case is even worse than the
original story) in the case of the terminally ill was a slippery slope, but
then we get this case, seemingly out of nowhere, from an ostensibly
enlightened, progressive, European country. I now see that making exceptions
for the terminally ill is not safe, it just won't stop there.

And why is the approval of the laws and society sought anyway? Suicide is a
mechanically trivial action. You can literally order poison hemlock off
Amazon, no assistance is needed, and anyone committed to kill themselves
obviously has no regard for their society, as they plan to deprive their
community of any benefit they could have given it. Therefore, they should not
expect society to sanction their ill-considered desires.

Dostoevsky predicted all of this 150 years ago. Read Crime and Punishment if
you disagree with me, yet deign to consider yourself an intelligent, educated
person.

~~~
voxic11
Are you saying force-feeding people who don't want to be fed is ethical? I
believe it's taught to be against medical ethics basically everywhere. This
girl had been confined against her will already for 6 years. How many years of
force-feeding would you have her endure as well? Go look up how force-feeding
is done, I believe the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on
CIA torture contained some descriptions.

~~~
DanBC
Force feeding is ethical if someone doesn't have capacity to make the decision
and doesn't have an advance directive in place.

It's likely that she did have capacity to make that decision, which is why the
courts didn't intervene.

------
dustfinger
I know this is an important topic, but it is not on topic.
see:[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
stordoff
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

The fact that this has prompted over 40 comments and good discussion would
seem to suggest it is on-topic.

Furthermore:

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam
> or off-topic, flag it.

~~~
dustfinger
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam
> or off-topic, flag it.

Touché! Thanks for pointing that out. I agree and I won't complain in the
future.

