The Daily Mail reports: “As assisted suicide bill goes to Lords, Dutch watchdog who once backed euthanasia warns UK of ‘slippery slope’ to mass deaths.” In six years, the number of euthanasia deaths has doubled.” Alex Schadenberg explains in his book Exposing Vulnerable People that so-called safeguards in the Netherlands and Belgium have been ignored and that the number of euthanasia and assisted-suicide deaths have risen rapidly. Many people think that euthanasia and assisted-suicide is used extremely rarely in exceptional circumstances, but when medicalized murder becomes normalized, it becomes more acceptable and more common. The Daily Mail reports:
In 2012, there were 4,188 deaths by direct euthanasia – 3 per cent of all deaths – and 3,695 deaths by direct euthanasia in 2011.
The figures do not include deaths by terminal sedation, where patients are rendered unconscious before they are dehydrated and starved to death, an act often referred to as ‘euthanasia by omission’.
This practice accounts for more than 12 per cent of all deaths in the country.
The Netherlands is following a pattern that anti-euthanasia campaigners say has happened wherever the practice has been legalised.
Whatever limits are originally placed on euthanasia and assisted-suicide give way to allow more and more victims people access to the deadly “treatment,” including the depressed.
