Hacker News Reader

Comment by aseerdbnarng | Hacker News Reader

My brother in-law works for the NHS. In every hospital and in every year, he's seen countless cases of families dropping their elderly relatives off for no reason other than to go off on holiday. The chance this law wont be used maliciously is zero.

View on HN

We have Euthanasia in The Netherlands for decades but there hasn't been any evidence of abuse as far as I can tell.

There have been some cases where there was prosecution of doctors because of protocol violations.

But I can't recall any 'abuse' of killing of elderly people for the inheritance.

The reality is that nothing is fool-proof. In theory anything ever can be abused.

But the risk of harm vs. the risk of benefit is too great in favour of the benefit.

That's why we drive cars even though they kill 40K+ people a year in the USA.

So I don't think the theoretical risk of abuse is a good reason to not allow Euthanasia.

Edit: In The Netherlands, each case of Euthanasia / request for assisted suicide is evaluated by multiple doctors / psychiatrists. Each case has to be reported to a special Euthanasia commission that will also verify if things were done right. We don't go over it lightly.

> but there hasn't been any evidence of abuse as far as I can tell.

Is anyone looking for it?

I doubt they just created a law for this and just walked away. According to this [^1] news article made in 2019, of the 62000 cases of euthanasia there were 15 that might not have been what the patient wanted. In only 3 of those 15 it seems that the checks were not properly conducted.

[^1] https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2301148-euthanasie-arts-voo...

That responsibility of doctors/psychiatrists to evaluate the case for allowing an individual's choice to die must weigh heavily at times. I remember the case from two years ago of a teenager who, because of an awful childhood, was mortally depressed and chose to die. UK news report [1].

Wikipedia article about the teenager [2]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/euthanasia-c...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noa_Pothoven

She committed suicide in the end, it was not (assisted) euthanasia as far as I can tell, although she wanted that.

In fact, in recent years a slippery slope has been entered, particularly with the decision of the Hoge Raad (21 April 2020) that euthanasia can be legal if a declaration has been made in writing, but the patient resists at the actual fulfilling of the request.

Also, political party D'66 is now pushing for the right for someone to end their life if they consider it "completed", without there being any serious suffering.

Note that not only the christian parties, but also the Socialist Party is very critical about broadening the criteria for euthanasia.

I myself would really like to see these kinds of relaxations. It is all about quality of life not quantity of life.

Thinking that your life is “completed” is related to suffering: if life is pointless or meaningless to you, having to go on is suffering.

Even if someone with dementia is occasionally killed against their will (whatever that even means), this is an incredibly small price to pay to reduce the suffering of the people suffering from dementia who want to be euthanized.

Sure, and a lot of freedoms or well intended legal provisions are used "maliciously." Because of the potential to misuse freedoms, should we not have them at all?

This is a freedom for which many, including myself, may eventually benefit versus the alternative. I may want to make such a choice for myself (hopefully many years into the future!) rather than live in agony and I really hope the option will at least be there for me in my country.

This is a good point - we can't be scared of everything on the basis it might be misused.

The challenge is to have proper regulation, with the right checks and balances in place - I don't think anyone is suggesting you can just rock up to your local euthanasia corner-shop and say "can I haz dead pls?".

Well there are certainly many freedoms that we restrict or completely deny just because of the potential to misuse them (e.g. freedom to own a gun).

I don't think this is the case though, and I agree with all of your second paragraph. But I do think (and it seems that) potential to misuse a freedom is sometimes enough to restrict it, even completely.

It's not like you can drop off anyone for euthanasia, though. From the article, they must

- suffer a "serious or incurable illness" or a "chronic or incapacitating" condition that causes "intolerable suffering"

- be an adult Spanish national or a legal resident

- be "fully aware and conscious" when they make the request, which has to be submitted twice in writing, 15 days apart

All of those conditions are easily by-passable except for the "legal resident" one.

One and three seem pretty ripe for abuse or creative interpretation.

I was not suggesting people would drop their relatives off for euthanasia. Only that given how awfully some people treat their elderly relatives, I get shivers thinking about giving these people the power to coerce a family member into suicide for convenience sake. Nominally you can put in place procedures to mitigate this, but I don’t see how it can be foolproof.

How many families who did not do this did he not see? This is the selection effect in all its glory.

There’s no claim being made that it’s a huge percentage. All that’s required is for it to be a large number for the post’s concern to make sense.

Just because people drop elderly relatives off to go on holiday does not mean that they'll be dropped off for euthanasia.

As with all irreversible decisions (death) there's going to be plenty of paperwork - and rightly so.

The implication is that these are the kind of people that see their elderly relatives as a nuisance and are more likely to push them towards euthanasia, which seems plausible to me.

Anyone who has spent time taking care of their elderly relatives knows that they are usually not completely aware of many things.

Hence the heinous but popular crime of scamming seniors.

It is used maliciously in every country it is legalised. Do not underestimate a person's ability for cruelty.

Will you provide some examples?

Probably, but this is a fully generalized argument against anything that can be used maliciously (which is pretty much anything). So it is obviously a specious argument.

Except it's a fundamentally different proposition, so I don't see the relevance of this anecdote.

I think the relevance is: If a family has decided that an elderly relative is of so little value to them that they will abandon them at a hospital with no need of medical attention, then the convenience of quietly and legally ending their life will outweigh the burden of providing support and family for that relative.

Right, but this isn't what the proposition is. It's that a person has a right to end their own life, not that someone else can just arbitrarily choose to euthanize someone else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com