LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

COLWELL: TO BE IN PAIN, OR NOT TO BE 9
Let those who are enthralled with the idea that physicians would be
incorruptible if VAE were legalised consider the findings of the Remmelink
Commission. This was a commission set up by the Dutch Ministers of
Health and Justice in January 1990 to gather detailed information about the
practice of euthanasia by physicians in The Netherlands. The data in the
commission’s report, released in September 1991, have been variously
received and interpreted. 7 The report itself and a summary of the report both
try to allay the anxieties of the Dutch and American societies regarding the
large number of cases of voluntary and especially non-voluntary active
euthanasia discovered in the Netherlands. 8 But some reviewers of the report
have been sharply critical of the widespread practice of euthanasia. 9 Still
others have attempted to strike a balance between the nearly-everything’sall-right
interpretation and the nearly-everything’s-all-wrong interpretation.
They find merit in what the Dutch government and physicians have been
doing in the area of health care, but point out some worrisome irregularities
in the Dutch physicians’ practices, as well as the danger of trying to use
those practices per se as a model for other countries. 10 However, all the
interpretations I have read acknowledge the fact that Dutch physicians in a
large number of cases have broken the Royal Dutch Medical Association’s
code of ethics, published in 1984, as well as the governmental guidelines on
the practice of euthanasia, also established in 1984. To take the clearest
example, in 1990 there were about one thousand cases of active nonvoluntary
euthanasia. 11
What much of the public under the tutelage of Plato does not see, and
what those under the tutelage of the apostle Paul do see, is that knowing
where to draw the moral line in cases of VAE is not the main problem.
Rather, the main problem is gathering the moral resolve to keep from
crossing the line. Witness our current situation. For a good long time we
have had a clear legal line barring us from the practice of VAE; but now
there is almost a stampede to cross it. What is especially troubling is that
many physicians are at the front of the herd.
7 See the late Daniel Overduin’s comments in “Matters of Life and Death: Bioethical
Issues in a Christian Perspective”, LTR 4.1/2:69-93.
8 Henk A. M. J. ten Have and Jos V. M. Welie, “Euthanasia: Normal Medical Practice”
Hastings Center Report 22.2 (March-April 1992): 36; Paul J. van der Maas, Johannes J. M.
van Delden, Loes Pijnenborg, and Caspar W. N. Looman, “Euthanasia and Other Medical
Decisions Concerning the End of Life”, The Lancet 338.8768 (14 September 1991): 669-74.
9 Richard Fenigsen, “The Report of the Dutch Governmental Committee on
Euthanasia”, Issues in Law and Medicine 7.3 (Winter 1991): 339-44.
10 Barney Sneiderman, “Euthanasia in the Netherlands: A Model for Canada” Humane
Medicine 8. 2 (April 1992): 104-15.
11 Sneiderman, 105-6.