Netherlands

Netherlands 'suicide contagion' from assisted dying: Theo Boer's smoke and mirrors


Author(s)

Neil Francis

Journal

Journal of Assisted Dying, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1–11.

Abstract

Background: Concerns had been raised about the scientific quality of a 2017 article by ethicist Theo Boer in which he theorised that lawful voluntary assisted dying (VAD) would potentially ‘dampen’ suicide rates, but drew the opposite conclusion: the suggestion that VAD cases have caused higher suicide rates.
Methods: A structured, forensic examination of the article was conducted.
Results: Numerous serious shortcomings were found, including (a) profound unfamiliarity with the complexity of suicide; (b) lack of a clear and specific pre-hoc methodology; (c) numerous unsupported speculations; (d) cherry-picked data and casual dismissal of data at odds with the conclusion; (e) a simple correlation interpreted as causation while failing to control for any confounding factors; (f) incoherent, contradictory and misleading statements; and (g) multiple editorial errors.
Conclusions: Boer’s article is poorly conceived and carelessly assembled, revealing unfamiliarity with both the subject matter and with scientific principles. The conclusions drawn are not supported by the article’s methodology or data. The article offers mere smoke and mirrors to conclude that VAD may increase suicide rates, at odds with wider evidence.

Article keywords

voluntary assisted dying, euthanasia, suicide contagion, Werther effect, Netherlands, methodology

Full PDF

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Citation

Francis, N 2019, 'Netherlands "suicide contagion" from assisted dying: Theo Boer's smoke and mirrors', Journal of Assisted Dying, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-11.

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Margaret Somerville's latest and repeated misinformation deserves censure.

If there’s one thing you have to admire about Margo Somerville, Catholic Professor of Bioethics at the University of Notre Dame Australia, it’s her persistence in the face of being called out for misrepresenting facts about assisted dying. She’s at it again.

Today in the Sydney Morning Herald, Somerville was quoted spruiking her credentials via a recent publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Palliative Care.1 Since I study the professional literature, I’m aware of said article, which was published several weeks ago. It's a shocker.

The authority bias

Somerville shows herself to again to not care much for the full facts. She seems more comfortable with calling on the ‘authority bias’: advancing her credentials as a “Professor of Bioethics” along with nine “international counterparts” in the authorship of said paper.

I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow analysis of how the JPC article skilfully employs reassuringly professional tones to stake a wholly one-sided and shockingly ill-informed stance against assisted dying law reform.

A very telling example of misinformation

Let’s look at just one very telling example: the statistics that the authors quote about non-voluntary euthanasia (NVE) rates in Belgium and the Netherlands. NVE is a doctor’s act of hastening a patient’s death without a current request from the patient. The authors say that:

“Administration of lethal drugs without patient request occurred in 1.7% of all deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium alone and 0.2% of all deaths in the Netherlands.”

Are these figures correct? Yes indeed they are... as at the date of the cited sources. However, they are just cherry-picked tidbits from a larger and very different smorgasboard of evidence.

A throbbing great falsehood with warts

Do the figures mean what the authors say they mean? In no uncertain terms, absolutely and incontrovertibly not.

The authors don’t just coyly suggest, imply or impute that those NVE rates are caused by the legalisation of assisted dying, they directly claim it. Right in front the statistics, they state categorically that:

“Allowing voluntary euthanasia has led to non-voluntary euthanasia.”

Let’s put this the politest way we can: that’s a throbbing great falsehood with warts on it. The authors would have known this if they’d paid attention to published research facts beyond their own opinions.

Comprehensively ignoring peer-reviewed facts

Had the paper’s authors (and the supposed peer reviewers) actually known much about the subject matter, they wouldn’t have referred to those figures, because they’re massively unhelpful to the case the authors attempt to prosecute. Here are three central published facts about the case:

Fact 1: Before the Netherlands’ euthanasia Act came into effect, the NVE rate was 0.7%. Then in the next research round with the Act in place it had dropped to 0.5%, and the round after that, to 0.2%. The last is the figure the authors quote as evidence that “VE leads to NVE”, despite the fact that the rate had massively dropped, not risen.

Fact 2: Before Belgium’s euthanasia Act came into effect, the NVE rate was 3.2% [typo 3.5% corrected]. Then in the next research round with the Act in place it had dropped to 1.7%, the figure the authors quote. Again, the rate had massively dropped, not risen.

Fact 3: The rate of NVE in the United Kingdom was researched around the same time as the later Dutch figures, and found to be 0.3%.2 The UK has never had an assisted dying law, so the 0.3% NVE rate, which is higher than the Dutch 0.2% rate the authors quote, can't have been caused by one.

So, these three key published facts — known to most of us with an interest in lawful assisted dying — squarely contradict the authors' VE-causing-NVE claim. It's at the very least astonishing and inexcusable that all the numerous authors and peer reviewers of this “scholarly” article either didn’t know, or “overlooked”, them.

Indeed, despite holding one of the world’s largest scholarly libraries on published assisted dying research, I know of no study that establishes a VE-to-NVE link. All the evidence is contrary.

Not the first time

We could perhaps be a little forgiving if the authors just got a statistic wrong. After all, we're all human. But there are ten authors, plus peer reviewers. And there’s the egregious offence the authors committed in making an unequivocal but false claim about the data. Did none of them know what they were talking about or bother to check?

In this case I’m wholly unforgiving. That's because I’ve called Somerville out multiple times before for misrepresenting data, including for misrepresenting Belgian and Dutch NVE data precisely as she does again in this JPC article. We’ve even publicly exchanged words about it via the ABC’s Religion and Ethics portal. It’s not like she simply didn’t know.

I’ve also called Somerville out for wrongly claiming that Dutch Minister of Health Dr Els Borst regretted the euthanasia law; and wrongly claiming the Dutch elderly go to German hospitals and nursing homes for healthcare for fear of being euthanased in the Netherlands, including that NVE actually does occur in German nursing homes, despite, as Somerville notes, “their strict prohibition on euthanasia”.

This rubbish deserves censure and ridicule

While I argue strongly that different views about assisted dying law reform are welcome in a robust democracy, repeatedly spreading such egregious misinformation about assisted dying is an embarrassment to and unworthy of scholarly attribution to professorship. Such rubbish deserves to be rejected, censured and ridiculed.

 

References

  1. Sprung, CL, Somerville, MA, Radbruch, L, Collet, NS, Duttge, G, Piva, JP, Antonelli, M, Sulmasy, DP, Lemmens, W & Ely, EW 2018, 'Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia: Emerging issues from a global perspective', Journal of Palliative Care.
  2. Seale, C 2009, 'End-of-life decisions in the UK involving medical practitioners', Palliat Med, 23(3), pp. 198-204.

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Jones, Paton and Kheriaty's articles demonstrate poor science and multiple, egregious instances of bias.

In 2015, Dr David Jones and Prof. David Paton published an article titled “How does legalization of physician-assisted suicide affect rates of suicide?” in the Southern Medical Journal. The article purported to establish suicide contagion from Oregon and Washington Death With Dignity Act (DWDA) deaths to “total suicides.”  It also purported to establish no decrease in general suicide rates, which Jones & Paton argued should occur by substitution of assisted death for some general suicides. (Notice how these two ‘expected’ results — an anticipated rise and an anticipated fall in suicide rates — are at odds in principle.)

In my thorough and empirically-backed response, I expose the disgraceful playbook of these authors as they shambolically commit no fewer than ten deadly sins against science in the pursuit of their opposition to lawful assisted dying.

Get the full report here

Executive Summary

In 2015, Dr David Jones & Prof. David Paton published an article in the Southern Medical Journal titled “How does legalization of physician-assisted suicide affect rates of suicide?” This study examines the article, as well as an enthusiastic editorial of it by Dr Aaron Kheriaty in the same journal issue, both of which portray “suicide contagion” from Oregon and Washington’s death with dignity acts (DWDA).

However, while contagion from general suicides is a well-established phenomenon, there are multiple sound reasons to reject contagion theory in relation to assisted deaths, including:

  • Most healthcare professionals readily acknowledge key differences in the characteristics of assisted deaths: for example, a fully informed, tested and rational decision with shared decision-making.
  • Those using Oregon and Washington’s DWDAs are, by qualifying for it, already actively dying. Thus, they are choosing between two ways of dying rather than between living and dying.
  • Most of those using the DWDA discuss it with their families (expected, peaceful death), whereas most general suicides occur in isolation and without discussion (unexpected, often violent death).
  • Multiple studies show that while families of general suicide experience complicated bereavement, families of assisted dying cope at least as well as, and in some cases better than, the general population or those who considered but did not pursue assisted death.

 
Even if “suicide contagion from assisted dying” theory were sound, direct evidence from official government sources shows that the number of potential suicides in Oregon in 2014 would have been fewer than 2 in 855 cases: undetectable by general modelling methods.

Jones & Paton’s article title conveys an air of skilled and scientific neutrality. However, close examination of the article, and Kheriaty’s editorialisation of it, reveals least ten serious flaws or ‘scientific sins.’

The authors demonstrated little understanding of the complex issues surrounding suicide, willingness to unjustifiably equate assisted dying with general suicide, contentment with failing to search for, consider or include contrary evidence including from sources they cite to argue their case, unreasonable trust in a model that couldn’t hope to legitimately resolve their premises, satisfaction with executing their model amateurishly, a disposition to overstate confidence of causation in the absence of meaningful statistical correlations, and an inclination for emphasising results in accordance with their theories while de-emphasising or ignoring others.

Any of these flaws was serious enough to invalidate Jones & Paton’s article and Kheriaty’s conclusions of it, yet there is not one deadly flaw: there are at least ten.

Their claim of a supposed 6.3% suicide contagion rate from assisted dying in Oregon and Washington is a conceptual and mathematical farce.

The Southern Medical Journal is a peer-reviewed journal. However, it is difficult to reconcile the rigorous standards and sound reputation that peer review is intended to maintain, with the numerous, egregious flaws in this study and its dissemination.

Rather than inform the ongoing conversation about lawful assisted dying, the Jones & Paton and Kheriaty articles misinform and inflame it.

Given the numerous egregious flaws, both articles ought to be retracted.

 

Get the full report here

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More Dutch evidence contradicts Margaret Somerville's 'suicide contagion' theory

I’ve previously published an extensive analysis of how Professor Margaret Somerville, of the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia, cherry-picked her way through select data that seemed to be (but wasn’t) consistent with her ‘contagion’ theory from assisted dying to the general suicide rate. I provided ample evidence from lawful jurisdictions that comprehensively contradicts her claim. I also published the summary in ABC Religion & Ethics.

Yet Somerville still says despite extensive real-world experience to the contrary, that “I believe that my [suicide contagion] statement will prove to be correct.”

She and her Catholic colleagues still hold onto several tenuous threads of information that might — just might — appear consistent with her theory, despite the truckloads of evidence to the contrary.

One of those tenuous threads is that the general suicide rate in the Netherlands has increased from 2008, around the same time that use of the Dutch euthanasia law also increased. (The general suicide rate previously fell as assisted dying rates increased.)

I reported official Dutch government statistics and expert financial reports to show that the unemployment rate explains most (80%) of the variation in the Dutch general suicide rate since 1960, and that the Netherlands was particularly hard-hit by the global financial crisis from 2008 — whereas neighbouring Belgium wasn’t and its suicide rate dropped as assisted dying numbers increased. Unemployment in hard times is a known significant risk factor for suicide.

Now, a detailed and peer-reviewed analysis of Dutch data recently published in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine throws more mud in the face of Somerville’s theory.1

The research looked at the Dutch assisted death and general suicide rates from 2002 through 2014, separately for each of the five Euthanasia Commission reporting regions.

Headline results of the averages for 2002–14 are shown in Figure 1.

netherlandsfiveregionmap.jpgFigure 1: The average assisted death rate (and suicide rate) as a percent of all deaths by region, 2002-14
Source: Koopman & Putter 2016

As you can see, Region 3, which includes Amsterdam, had by far the greatest assisted death rate (3.4%), compared with the other four regions (1.7% – 2.0%). Yet Region 3’s suicide rate at 1.2% was the same as Region 5 which had only half the assisted death rate of Region 3 (1.7% vs 3.4%). (The authors, unusually, expressed suicides as a percentage of all deaths rather than per 100k population.)

The results are the opposite of Somerville’s theory which says that Region 3’s general suicide rate should be much higher than (not the same as) Region 5’s.

Those figures are the average for 2002–14. It’s possible that the picture is a little different for the more recent years in which the assisted dying rate is higher.

To answer that question, I’ve retrieved official Dutch Government data and calculated the assisted dying rates and general suicide rates for 2014 alone, the most recent year for which all the data is available. I’ve also calculated the general suicide rate per 100,000 population, the more usual way of reporting and comparing suicide statistics. The results are shown in Figure 2.

dutchregionsveandsuicide2014.gifFigure 2: The Dutch assisted death rate and general suicide rate by region for 2014
Sources: Euthanasia Commission annual reports, Dutch Government statistics

While region 1 (the far north) has the lowest assisted death rate (3.2% of all deaths), it has by far the highest general suicide rate (13.6 per 100k population).

The latest Dutch regional data shows the opposite of Margaret Somerville’s ‘suicide contagion’ theory, adding to the already extensive evidence against it.Conversely, region 3 (which includes Amsterdam) has by a very large factor the highest assisted dying rate (6.0% of all deaths), yet it has the second-lowest general suicide rate (10.3 per 100k population).

This latest empirical evidence is consistent with other extensive evidence I’ve published showing an inverse — or no — relationship between assisted dying rates and general suicide rates.

The question is whether Margaret Somerville and her Catholic friends will pay the slightest attention, or continue to rely on invalid, cherry-picked morsels of data that they think support their theory, but don’t.

 

References

  1. Koopman, JJE & Putter, H 2016, 'Regional variation in the practice of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands', Netherlands Journal of Medicine, 74(9), pp. 387-394.

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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

In the previous video a claim by Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville was rebutted: that the Dutch and Belgians seek health care in Germany because they fear being killed by their own doctors and without being asked. In this video, she furthers her bizarre claim by referring to Dutch and Belgian non-voluntary euthanasia rates as 'proof' of her border-crossing healthcare thesis.

However, her cherry-picked statistic establishes nothing, whereas her claim is contradicted by robust research, which I discuss in this video.

It's unclear why Professor Somerville seems to be unaware of or ignores readily-available yet contradictory evidence of central importance to her claim.

This 'non-voluntary slippery slope' claim is another one that's popular amongst campaigners against assisted dying.

 

Transcript

Neil Francis: In the last video, we established as false, Professor Margaret Somerville’s absurd claim of the Dutch going to Germany for health care because they feared being killed by their doctors. But she goes on.

Margaret Somerville: In actual fact they’ve got good reason to fear that, uh, there’s a minimum of, a minimum of 500 cases a year, of doctors who administer euthanasia to people in the Netherlands, where it’s legal, and the patient does not know they’re being given euthanasia, and has not consented to it. Some reports put the figure as high as 2000 cases a year.

Neil Francis: And she makes a similar case for Belgium. So let’s look at the empirical evidence.

Neil Francis: What she’s referring to is non-voluntary euthanasia, or NVE. It occurs in every jurisdiction around the world. A study published in 2003 found these rates. You’ll notice that Italy had the lowest and Belgium the highest NVE rates. And at the time of this study, which countries had legalised assisted dying?

Neil Francis: Switzerland had since 1942, and the Netherlands since 1982. But none of the others had. So the Swiss and Dutch NVE rates, with assisted dying laws, were lower than Denmark’s, without one. And the higher Belgian rate wasn’t caused by an assisted dying law, because none existed at the time.

Neil Francis: But did the Belgian and Dutch NVE rates go up when each country legalised assisted dying by statute in 2002? Here’s what happened in Belgium: the rate didn’t go up — it went down, and the drop is highly statistically significant.

Neil Francis: And in the time since Professor Somerville made her misleading claim, it’s remained lower.

Neil Francis: And here’s what happened in the Netherlands. This rate before the Act is around 1,000 cases a year, and this one after the Act is around 500, the rate that Professor Somerville refers to in her claim as “the minimum”. What she failed to mention is that since statutory legalisation of assisted dying, the Dutch NVE rate dropped, not risen, and to a similar level as the UK, the world’s gold standard for palliative care, and which has never had an assisted dying law.

Neil Francis: And since Professor Somerville made her misleading claim, it’s dropped even further.

Neil Francis: If Professor believes that she has verifiable empirical evidence to back up her claims, let her produce it for examination. Until then, her non-voluntary euthanasia “slippery slope ”is nothing more than fear-mongering innuendo.

Visit the YouTube page.

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Professor Margaret Somerville makes an indefensible 'suicide contagion' claim.

Catholic ethicist Professor Margaret Somerville claims that every assisted suicide jurisdiction shows 'contagion' to the general suicide rate. The empirical evidence contradicts her claim.

Get the full report here.

Professor Margaret Somerville, currently Professor of Ethics in the School of Medicine at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia,[1] has enjoyed ongoing publication of her opinions, with few challenges published to date.

Back in 2007, Somerville, then a Professor of Ethics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, appeared as an expert witness in an Iowa District Court case. The court comprehensively rejected her testimony, determining that she:

“…specifically eschews empirical research and methods of logical reasoning in favour of ‘moral intuition.’ She has no training in empirical research…”

Professor Somerville, I argue, has again fallen short on empirical research and logical reasoning. To illustrate, I will analyse her claim, published in an opinion piece in ABC Religion and Ethics that:

“…the general suicide rate has increased in every jurisdiction that has legalized assisted suicide.

While her claim may be her own personal opinion, she has presented it expressly stating that she is a Professor of Ethics at her current university of employment, lending the claim perceived authority.

This report demonstrates how her claim and her defence of it are contradicted by multiple sources of empirical government and other primary research evidence. It also demonstrates that she failed to engage appropriate scholarly standards that require the active search for, acquisition and analysis of all reasonably available relevant data in an attempt to answer a particular question.

In making her claim, Prof. Somerville:

  • Cites ‘supportive’ data from lawful jurisdictions while overlooking other data, sometimes even in the same data set, that are inconsistent with her claim;
  • Cites as supporting evidence an econometric modelling study that did not find a statistically-significant relationship between assisted dying law and the general (non-assisted) suicide rate;
  • Fails to consider data from all jurisdictions with assisted suicide laws while making a claim about them all — overlooking Switzerland, whose empirical data is clearly at odds with her claim;
  • Repeatedly cites non-academic anti-euthanasia lobbyist Mr Alex Schadenberg (who also cites her) as a source of evidence for her claim and who in turn quotes a television source and another lobbyist’s opinion to underpin his own beliefs about ‘suicide contagion’; and
  • Conflates voluntary euthanasia (physician-administration) with assisted suicide (patient self-administration) such that her argument, at least in the context of Belgium and the Netherlands, is substantially about the novel concept of ‘euthanasia contagion’ rather than the more familiar ‘suicide contagion’ expression she uses.
     

These findings are consistent with the Iowa court’s ruling that Prof. Somerville sometimes relies on ‘moral intuition’ rather than sound empirical research and logical reasoning.

My report also draws a number of connections between those advancing misinformation on assisted dying ‘suicide contagion,’ and Catholic identity. Catholic identity is not a reason to reject arguments, but it does help identify the source of a majority of ‘suicide contagion’ misinformation.

Finally, I argue that the appropriate course of action for Prof. Somerville is to retract her ‘suicide contagion in every jurisdiction’ claim.

 

Get the full report here.


[1]   Not to be confused with another Professor Margaret Somerville, who is Director of the Centre for Educational Research at Western Sydney University.

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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville claimed in a University address that elderly Dutch people are fearful of being euthanased in nursing homes and hospitals and instead travel to Germany for health care.

She provided no sources or evidence for her claim.

Dr Els Borst, the Minister resonsible for the Netherlands' euthanasia law, reveals these claims about 'fear of being killed' in nursing homes as 'absolute lies.' Dutch Senator Heleen Dupuis confirms that it is untrue.

The claim is popular amongst opponents of assisted dying law reform. It raises questions about how a Professor of Ethics came to state is as authoriative fact.

Transcript

Neil Francis: Former Dutch Minister for Health, Dr Els Borst, shared an experience her Government had with the Vatican about assisted dying

Els Borst: Their journal, the Osservatore Romano, was writing, was publishing articles saying that in the Netherlands, people who went to a nursing home or an old people's home, didn't dare to do that any more because they were so afraid they would be killed by their doctor after a week or so.

Els Borst: And we were so angry about this, absolute lies, that we went together, to the Vatican, and we told them that if they didn't stop that sort of lies in their journal, that we would stop diplomatic relations with Vatican City.

Els Borst: We had an ambassador there, and my colleague the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, "I'll withdraw that ambassador and he'll never return."

Else Borst: And then it stopped.

Neil Francis: Well perhaps the Vatican did, but here's Catholic Professor of Ethics, Margaret Somerville.

Margaret Somerville: Old Dutch citizens are seeking admission to nursing homes and hospitals in Germany, which has a strict prohibition against euthanasia because of its Nazi past, and they're too frightened to go into nursing homes or hospitals in the Netherlands.

Neil Francis: I asked Dutch Senator, Professor Heleen Dupuis, about the claim.

Heleen Dupuis: OK, stupid. It is simply not true.

Neil Francis: It's time to stop spreading such fearmongering scuttlebutt.

Visit the YouTube page.

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Update: Margaret Somerville is now Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Notre Dame Australia.

Catholic Professor of Ethics Margaret Somerville claimed in a University address that the Minister who brought in the Netherlands' euthanasia Act (that's Dr Els Borst), said that doing so had been "a serious mistake."

In an offence against scholalry standards, Prof. Somerville did not check her facts with the primary source before making the claim. I know, because I did. I interviewed Dr Borst in Utrecht: Prof. Somerville had not contacted Dr Borst, and Dr Borst stated clearly and without hestitation that she still thought it a good law.

Prof. Somerville instead chose to repeat scuttlebut circulating amongst assisted dying law reform opponents.

Transcript

Neil Francis: Before her death, I visited Dr Els Borst in Utrecht, to seek her current views about the Netherlands' euthanasia Act, which she introduced into the Dutch parliament, and which had been in effect for many years.

Voice of Neil Francis (interview): What are your feellings about the law?

Els Borst: I'm still very happy with it. I think we did the right thing there, also in the way we formulated it.

Neil Francis: But despite the clarity of Dr Borst's continued support for the law, Professor Somerville claimed the opposite in an address at the University of Tasmania.

Margaret Somerville: The Minister who was responsible for shepherding through the legislation that legalised euthanasia in the Netherlands admitted publicly that doing so had been a serious mistake."

Neil Francis: Oh dear. I showed Dr Borst the video of Professor Somerville's claim, and here's her response.

Els Borst: I know that story. I'd like to meet this Margaret S... what's her name?

Vice of Neil Francis: Margaret Somerville

Els Borst: ... well maybe she wouldn't listen anyway.

Neil Francis: The public have a right to ask why Professor Somerville chose to spread scuttlebut, instead of checking her sources in a proper, scholarly fashion.

Visit the YouTube page.

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Assisted dying rates in Dutch-speaking cultures (orange bars) are much higher than elsewhere.

In this whitepaper, Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) primary empirical data on assisted dying is analysed — including with new and advanced approaches — to provide fresh insights into contemporary practices. Investigation reveals that the assisted dying rate in Dutch-speaking cultures appears to be uniquely higher than in other cultures irrespective of the permissiveness of the legislative framework, yet is still practiced conservatively.

Download a full copy of the Whitepaper here: PDF (648Kb).

Summary

This new compilation and unique analysis of primary research data from statutory authorities and the peer-reviewed literature provides fresh insights into assisted dying practice in Benelux, including:

  1. Rates of assisted dying in the Netherlands and Belgium have followed an expected sigmoid curve, now beginning to level out.
  2. Several factors have contributed to the higher increase in the Netherlands rate, including recovery from a suppression of cases immediately following statutory reform, a rise in cancer diagnoses, and an increase in granting of assisted dying through new visiting teams launched in 2012.
  3. Both Netherlands and Belgium doctors demonstrate caution if not conservatism when assessing assisted dying requests.
  4. Despite most assisted dying occurring in cases of cancer, fewer than one in ten cancer deaths in the Netherlands and one in twenty in Belgium is an assisted death.
  5. Other conditions such as degenerative neurological, pulmonary and circulatory illnesses each account for a very small proportion of the increase in cases since legalisation in Benelux.
  6. The assisted dying rate in dementia and other mental illness is very low despite controversy around—and a tiny rise in granting of—such cases.
  7. The hypothesis that females or the elderly would be ‘vulnerable’ to assisted dying law is contradicted by the data.
  8. The rate of non-voluntary euthanasia has decreased significantly in both the Netherlands and Belgium since assisted dying was permitted by statute.
  9. Assisted dying rates in Dutch-speaking cultures are significantly higher than in non-Dutch cultures, seemingly unrelated to the permissiveness of the jurisdiction’s legal framework.

 

beneluxratessmall.gif
Benelux country reported assisted dying rates (as a percentage of all deaths)
as at 2014. The three countries have similar assisted dying laws.
 

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The AMA fails to represent the breadth of physicians perspectives around assisted dying.

This informative Go Gentle Australia video explains why the Australian Medical Association is out of touch with the wider Australian doctor community. Around a third of Australian doctors are members of the AMA.

The AMA currently holds a position of hostility towards assisted dying law reform, as it did against abortion before that was formally legalised. The doctors in this video explain how the AMA does not represent their views on assisted dying in restricted circumstances.

Visit the YouTube page.

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