The Dutch Parliament has recently approved a new law regarding terminally ill people with no hope for their future that allows the termination of human life.

The news was reported with great emphasis by world newspapers and broadcasters highlighting the point that this is the first law to legalise euthanasia in Europe, while omitting to add that although the Netherlands was the first country to pass such a law, it is also the only one to have done so. The last time we heard about a country authorising doctors to legally suppress human lives was at the Nuremberg trials. Unfortunately it has happened again, and once more in highly civilised Europe, where the European Parliament’s Committee for the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy has drawn up a document whose section no. 8 says that “in lack of any curative treatments and when correctly applied palliative cares, both psychological and medical, have proved unsuccessful, and whenever a fully conscious patient repeatedly and continuously requests the termination of a life that he or she considers devoid of dignity, and a council of doctors, assembled to the purpose, ascertains the impossibility of administering any further specific therapy, the above request must be satisfied, without, in so doing, causing prejudice to the respect for human life.” How a living being can be suppressed without causing prejudice to the respect for human life remains to be seen, but the Dutch Parliament immediately availed itself of the distinguished opinion of a Committee created to protect the environment and consumers’ rights to pass a law that, according to the spirit of the law, should aim at improving the assistance offered to terminal patients. It appears clear that the chosen wording effectively legalises so-called “active euthanasia”, which is much more serious than “passive euthanasia” and however not to be confused with refraining from therapeutic obstinacy, trying to keep a patient alive at all costs. Moreover, the National Committee for Bioethics categorically rejected the section of the European Commission’s document that says that doctors “must” satisfy a patient’s request of ending his life. Undoubtedly, a doctor’s involvement in the criminal action of ending a patient’s life presents moral, legal and ethical aspects that should not and must not escape the attention of the Medical Association, which must rise up against this encroachment of politics into the ethical sphere of the medical profession and into doctors’ consciences. It is very easy for legislators to decide the suppression of human life and then establish that the ones to do it should be doctors, who devote their entire existence and knowledge to serving the life – not the death – of their patients. The precedents regarding Adolph Hitler, who resorted to doctors to determine the systems with which to eliminate the handicapped and later, progressively, all those whom he considered a burden for the State, should have taught mankind a lesson. While solemnly reaffirming the supreme dignity of the human being, and in particular of his or her right to life, the Second Vatican Council denounced as crimes against life “any kind of homicide, as well as genocide, abortion, euthanasia and even voluntary suicide”. It is necessary however to stress that nobody can authorise the killing of an innocent human being, whether it be a foetus, an embryo, a child, an adult or an incurable and dying old person. Nobody can request a homicidal act to be performed on themselves or on others entrusted to their responsibility, nor can anyone consent to it, either implicitly or explicitly. No authority can impose it by law nor tolerate it. It constitutes an extremely serious violation of human rights, an offence against the human person, a crime against life, an attack against humanity. The explicit request for a medical act of compassion directed at relieving the pain and agony of illness does not diminish the responsibility of whoever must procure death, even if aimed at eliminating someone’s final sufferings or freeing abnormal children, the mentally ill or the incurable from a life of misery, lasting perhaps years, which might impose heavy loads on families and on society. Gravely disabling diseases, that cause prolonged suffering, might induce considerations legitimising patients’ and other persons’ requests to end someone’s life; but, even accepting that they mean well, the nature of the homicidal act remains, as does the grave responsibility of those who must perform the act, which can certainly not be qualified as a medical act but only as a crime. The entreaties of the ill, even the seriously ill, who invoke death, must not be taken as the expression of a desire for euthanasia, but as an anguished cry for help and affection. Besides medical treatment, sick persons need someone to stand by, with love, affection and the human warmth that all those around them should have. That is the only obligation that a true doctor has, and not to solve the problem by pulling the plug. Translated by Interpres sas