Dutch's Euthanasia Policy

By TOBY STERLING

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The Dutch Health Ministry will soon issue its opinion on a proposal to expand the country's euthanasia policy to cover infants, the mentally handicapped and the demented, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Health Secretary Clemence Ross, who has opposed expanding euthanasia laws in the past, is to send an opinion to Parliament on the long-running debate in three or four weeks, spokesman Richard Lancee told The Associated Press.

Under current law, euthanasia can be administered in the Netherlands to people who are terminally ill with no hope of recovery, are suffering great pain and who ask to die. Two doctors must agree.

All cases must be reported to an external panel of medical and ethical experts who decide if the procedure was properly carried out. There were 1,815 reported cases in 2003.

Ross is to lay out the government's position on creating similar panels to vet cases where people are terminally ill and deemed to be in great suffering, but are unable to decide for themselves whether they want to die.

The Royal Dutch Medical Association supports creating such panels. A similar proposal was stricken from the euthanasia bill that took effect in 2002, making the Netherlands the first country to legalize euthanasia.

Doctors at the Groningen Medical Center made international headlines last year when they said they had been following similar guidelines for severely ill newborns.

The Groningen Protocol, as the guidelines have come to be known, say euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.

According to a study published in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine in January, 22 such cases had been reported to prosecutors since 1997. Prosecutors found that the guidelines were followed in all of them, so they recommended to superiors the cases not be pursued further though they were technically murder.