Monday, March 7, 2016

Euthanasia and Loneliness

From Ave Maria Radio:
A majority of people killed by euthanasia in the Netherlands for so-called psychiatric reasons had complained of loneliness, a new study has found. Researchers in the U.S. found that loneliness, or “social isolation”, was a key motivation behind the euthanasia requests of 37 of 66 cases reviewed, a figure representing 56 per cent of the total. The study by the National Institute of Health also revealed that the Netherlands was operating a de facto policy of euthanasia on demand, with patients “shopping” for doctors willing to give them a lethal injection for the most trivial of reasons. Many of them used euthanasia clinics and mobile units willing to over-ride decisions of family doctors who believed that a death wish could not be justified. The research, led by Dr Scott Kim, cited the case of a woman of good mental and physical health who was killed by lethal injection because she felt lonely following the death of her husband a year earlier. The killings, which were carried out between 2011 and 2014, were permitted even though a person can qualify for euthanasia under Dutch law only if they are suffering unbearably from an untreatable condition. (Read more.)
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