New rules governing euthanasia in Holland ‘will allow doctors to spike patients’ drinks with sleeping pills to stop them becoming violent before lethal injections. Is that really what we want for the United Kingdom?

New rules governing euthanasia in Holland ‘will allow doctors to spike patients’ drinks with sleeping pills to stop them becoming violent before lethal injections’.

This further relaxation of Hollands euthanasia laws follows ‘a court ruling that overturned a murder charge’ against nursing home doctor Marinou Arends, who ‘secretly slipped a sedative into the coffee of a 74-year-old female dementia sufferer before administering a lethal injection.’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/dutch-euthanasia-rules-changed-after-acquittal-in-sedative-case

It was reported that when this elderly lady ‘sat up in bed to try to avoid being given the injection, a relative had pushed her back down’; t

Last month, ‘the Dutch government also approved plans to allow euthanasia for terminally ill children’, claiming ‘it would stop them “suffering hopelessly and unbearably”’ (‘Holland allows secret sedation of euthanasia patients’, .  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/20/dutch-doctors-allowed-sedate-dementia-patients-euthanasia-injections/amp/

Holland allows children to be euthanised and one of its euthanasia clinics has a two year waiting list for people with mental illness. https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2020/09/alex-schadenberg-executive-director_18.html

Mercifully, there are still some Dutch doctors who believe it is unethical to kill their patients: with over 200 medics issuing a statement that ‘no doctor should be allowed to secretly sedate patients before euthanasia.’

Before being sedated by seductive argument that they are being kind or compassionate British lawmakers need to remain wide awake and realise the it is simply not safe to change laws that serve us incredibly well. Both Houses of Parliament have carefully considered the dangers which would be posed to disabled people and vulnerable people and concluded that our laws, backed by hospices and palliative care, are compassionate and put protection first.

I am sure that if the patient killed by Marinou Arends had been able to express a view she too would have voted for laws which protect rather than laws which allow a nursing home doctor to sedate you and then kill you.