DISTURBING TRUTH

April 25, 1999
Disturbing truth about euthanasia
Many patients wind up being killed by doctors without their consent  
By LICIA CORBELLA
Calgary Sun

For some reason, I wrote the date Oct. 1980 on the inside cover of a paperback copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s book of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House.

The only reason I can think of for recording that date was because, perhaps at the age of 17 when everything seemed so important, I felt that reading this book was somehow an occasion worthy of documenting.

The book affected me deeply and it was upon the reading of this humorous little gem that a couple of my most passionate opinions were germinated.

I was reminded of the book after an irate, verbally violent man phoned to berate me over my column last Sunday in which I declared Dr. Jack Kevorkian an evil murderer who was not at all motivated by compassion for terminally ill people in pain -- as is commonly believed -- but rather by his obsession with death and his contempt for human life.

"I'll bet you're just parroting some priest or something," the man yelled over the phone. "That's where you got your opinion on euthanasia, isn't it, you stupid @#$*?" he asked.

But before I could answer, he hung up in a rage.

Well, actually, sir, my opinion on euthanasia has evolved, but started all those years ago in October of 1980 when I read the short story on which the book was named.

Even though I never reread Welcome to the Monkey House, the story -- or rather its message -- stuck with me. So a couple of days ago, I dug through numerous dusty boxes in my basement to find the book and reread the story.

As a reviewer at the front of the book states: "(Vonnegut) is a medicine man, conjuring up fantasies to warn the world." Welcome to the Monkey House certainly does that.

The story is set at a time when the population on Earth was 17 billion people.

"So the World Government was making a two-pronged attack on overpopulation. One pronging was the encouragement of ethical suicide, which consisted of going to the nearest Suicide Parlour and asking a Hostess to kill you painlessly while you lay on a Barcalounger. The other pronging was compulsory ethical birth control."

For some reason, I had remembered just the Suicide Parlour aspect and forgot about the birth control prong.  For years after reading that story I would imagine what would have happened had Suicide Parlours really existed.  I'd meet mildly depressed people and think, gee, it's a good thing those suicide parlours don't exist.

The fallout from legalized euthanasia is almost all negative. The attitude that the elderly and handicapped are simply a burden on society is rampant in Holland, where euthanasia has been legal since 1981.

In 1990, the Dutch Patients' Association developed wallet-sized cards which state that if the signer is admitted to a hospital "no treatment be administered with the intention to terminate life."

In 1988, the British Medical Association released the findings of a study on Dutch euthanasia conducted at the request of British right-to-die advocates. The study found that even though medical care is provided to everyone in Holland, palliative care, ie: programs which provide modern and effective pain control for patients were "poorly developed." As of the mid-'90s, only two hospice programs existed in Holland, and the services they provided were very limited.

In 1991, the first government study on the practice of Dutch euthanasia was released. The report, known as the Remmelink Report (after Prof. J. Remmelink, attorney general of the High Council of the Netherlands, who headed the study committee) made disturbing revelations, including:

* In 1990, 1,040 people died from involuntary euthanasia, meaning that doctors actively killed these patients without the patients' consent.  *14% of these patients were fully competent;  * 72% had never given any indication that they would want their lives terminated;  * In 8% of the cases, doctors performed involuntary euthanasia despite the fact that they believed alternative options were still possible.  * Cost saving is one of the stated goals of euthanasia in Holland.

So while right-to-die advocates often argue that euthanasia is an issue of "choice," the Dutch experience clearly shows that, when voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are accepted practice, a significant number of patients end up having no choice at all.

People in the United States should be particularly worried about euthanasia and assisted suicide becoming legal, since medical care there is profit-driven. Unlike in Canada or Holland, where medical care is automatically provided to everyone, in the U.S. millions of people cannot afford medical insurance, never mind medical care. If euthanasia or assisted suicide were to become accepted in the U.S., death might be the only "medical option" many could afford.

Then, instead of Welcome to the Monkey House, it would be more like, Welcome to the Mortuary.