The following article by Alex Schadenberg is a re-post from the LifeNews.com website published 30th May 2017. The Dr Jan Bernheim mentioned in this article is currently in NZ on a speaking tour at the bequest of the Volunteer Euthanasia Society. His purpose here, being to drum up support for Assisted Suicide. Given that 77 % of submissions made to the Parliamentary Health Select Committee on this matter were against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Right to Life believes that the mainstream Euthanasia supporters are now scrambling to prop up support for their failing ideologies. With the help of biased media reporting they are doing all they can to regain lost ground. The article below gives the lie to the assurance that workable safeguards can protect the vulnerable when euthanasia is decriminalised. Reads…
In November 2013, I debated Dr. Jan Bernheim in Brussels, Belgium concerning the practice of euthanasia.
During the debate I explained that data from studies proved that in the Flanders region of Belgium (2007) 32% of the assisted deaths were done without explicit request, assisted deaths were being done by nurses (the law limits the act to physicians) and 47% of the assisted deaths were not reported.
The research indicated that assisted deaths, that are done “outside of the law” share a high co-relation with the demographic group of people who are over the age of 80, who are incompetent to make decisions, who usually die in a hospital and usually have an unpredictable end-of-life trajectory, representing a vulnerable patient group at risk of having euthanasia imposed upon them.
Since then recent Belgian studies concerning the practice assisted death in the Flanders region of Belgium (2013) found that 1.7% of all deaths, (more than 1000 deaths) were hastened without explicit request, and more than 40% of the assisted deaths were not reported. The practice of clandestine euthanasia was not improving in Belgium.
Bernheim is fully aware that there is significant abuse of the Belgian euthanasia law. After being challenged at the 2013 debate, Bernheim stated that “there are problems with the Belgian euthanasia law.”
n an article by Mike Watson, published in the Stuff news, Bernheim is quoted as saying:
Uncontrolled, clandestine euthanasia practices to help the terminally ill to die could be avoided if New Zealand legislated to control physician assisted dying, a Belgian medical expert says.
Professor Jan Bernheim?, an oncologist and founder of ‘Not Necessarily Terminal’, addressed a meeting in New Plymouth on Monday night attended by around 40 people.
New Plymouth was the second of eight meetings he will talk at during the next three weeks as a guest of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society for a series of nationwide public talks entitled ‘Dying Well in Belgium’.
“In Belgium we’ve put an end to the clandestine practice, and because of the openness of the whole process, abuse of the dying patient is much less probable now that it is legalized with strict controls and peer review in place.”
The law also protected caregivers from undue prosecution.
Before the law changed in Belgium, dying patients who requested euthanasia with the knowledge of their families or nursing staff were less likely to get it because doctors were worried they could be charged with murder if someone who knew about the request objected to euthanasia, he said.
Ironically, before the law, dying patients with intractable suffering who did not request euthanasia were more likely to get their suffering shortened paternalistically by doctors.
The legislation put an end to this sad paradox, he said.
Whereas Bernheim is misleading his audience when he states that in Belgium they have put an end to the clandestine practice when the studies actually prove that the opposite is true. Bernheim also misled the public on his tour of Québec a few years ago.
Meanwhile the number of euthanasia deaths are increasing every year in Belgium with the practice of euthanasia extending to greater numbers of conditions and even to children.
Bernheim is a long-time euthanasia promoter who will willingly hide the facts at the altar of death.
LifeNews.com Note: Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and you can read his blog here.
Rhona says
June 3, 2017 at 9:43 amI can believe that. Without reference to suicide relief services, palliative care options, disability services and government social assistance programmes which would helpfully and constructively extend the lives of those *targeted* by the apologists for euthanasia, though, how can “consent’ in the context of euthanasia *really* be called *informed* consent? A disabled friend of mine calls pro-euthanasia propaganda ‘the demonisation of dependency’ and I think he’s probably right. Over the last thirty years, neoliberal rightist governments have tried to erode core social and religious values of interdependency, social solidarity and community in the name of radical libertarian individualism. Perhaps pro-lifers should also be questioning how ‘consensual’ “consent” to euthanasia really is?
Jan says
June 6, 2017 at 6:23 pmAbsolutely right Rhona, ever since abortion was championed as every woman’s right the ‘divide and rule’ ideology has sectioned society into dependent groups so we have (born) childrens rights further weakening families with often wealthy non government organisations using the same buzz words and methodology worldwide. Consequently groups like Family First lose their charity status at the behest of unelected, government appointed censors and have to seek redress through costly court action
while elected governments don’t or can’t lift a finger to help them.
Rhona says
June 8, 2017 at 8:34 amOne of the things that really appalls me about the pro-euthanasia lobby is how they excuse the actions of mass murderers like the late Dr Jack Kevorkian, who made a point of hunting down isolated, depressed and suicidal people with disabilities and then offering to help them kill themselves. Even today, one witnesses some of their websites making excuses for his actions and many of them seem to view the very existence of people with disabilities as ‘unacceptable.’ Look at the absolutely vile comments about Down Syndrome made by Peter Singer in his horrible book “Should the Baby Live”, for instance. What about the slippery slope that led from Tiergarten IV to the Nazi Holocaust, for that matter?