Dutch Mobile Euthanasia Units Will Visit People’s Homes

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 2, 2012   |   6:16PM   |   Amsterdam, Netherlands

Euthanasia is so pervasive in the Netherlands that mobile euthanasia units are now visiting people’s homes in an effort to make it easier for someone to take their livings by killing them before natural death.

As the London Guardian newspaper reports:

A controversial system of mobile euthanasia units that will travel around the country to respond to the wishes of sick people who wish to end their lives has been launched in the Netherlands.

The scheme, which started on Thursday , will send teams of specially trained doctors and nurses to the homes of people whose own doctors have refused to carry out patients’ requests to end their lives.

The launch of the so-called Levenseinde, or “Life End”, house-call units – whose services are being offered to Dutch citizens free of charge – coincides with the opening of a clinic of the same name in The Hague, which will take patients with incurable illnesses as well as others who do not want to die at home.

The scheme is an initiative by the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End to Life (NVVE), a 130,000-member euthanasia organisation that is the biggest of its kind in the world.

“From Thursday, the Life End clinic will have mobile teams where people who believe they are eligible for euthanasia can register,” Walburg de Jong, a NVVE spokesman, said.

“If they do comply, the teams will be able to carry out the euthanasia at patients’ homes should their regular doctors be unable or refuse to help them,” he added.

The report comes on the heels of disturbing news that one woman with macular degeneration was killed via euthanasia.

Cases justifying euthanasia are spreading like wildfire in the Netherlands, to the point that visual impairment can become the primary reason to kill. The latest report from the Netherlands describes an elderly woman who was euthanized over macular degeneration and other often experienced symptoms of being elderly.

As bioethicist Wesley J. Smith writes:

These are certainly not remarkable symptoms in old age. Indeed, once can certainly understand why they would cause distress. But often these depressions in the elderly are treatable with proper geriatric psychiatric interventions.