Belgium's Curse

Pain Management Became A Death Prescription

Sophie Druenne witnessed the scourge of Belgium's legalized euthanasia framework and the devaluing of human life by doctors charged with protecting it.

 Lillian Quinones
The Federalist

Upon administering a lethal dose, the doctor left the room. But the patient was not dying. For Sophie Druenne, a palliative care nurse working under the Belgian physician who had approved the euthanasia request, this was a breaking point.

“The situation was so absurd that we were laughing,” Sophie told me at the start of our interview. “We had to call the practitioner back to tell him that the patient was still alive and that we had to give him an additional injection. And I caught myself laughing in the course of protecting myself from what was happening.”

Recounting the story to her friends and family outside the hospital, Sophie realized the horror of this situation and began to question Belgium’s so-called social experiment with euthanasia. Legalized in 2002, euthanasia was decriminalized under certain conditions. Its scope continues to widen, with the inclusion of minors in 2016, and now lawmakers debate broadening that scope to include psychiatric patients. It wasn’t these laws, however, that changed Sophie’s opinion toward her country’s euthanasia policies, but working in Belgium’s integrated palliative care system.

Wipe Them Out . . . All of Them

Belgium’s Euthanasia Moral Abyss

By Wesley J. Smith
National Review Online

Belgium legalized lethal-jab euthanasia in 2002. Since that time, medicalized homicide has grown increasingly radical.

Now, MercatorNet has published a story based on a translation of the “Belgium Federal Commission on the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia” — the nation’s official report on patient-killing by doctors. It makes for very chilling reading.

Here are some lowlights:

• Deaths by legal euthanasia have increased nearly tenfold (982%) from 235 in 2003 — the first full year of legalisation — to 2,309 in 2017 (my emphasis).
  
• Organ donation [conjoined with euthanasia] has been reported in 8 patients for the years 2016 – 2017. Patients had either a nervous system disorder or a mental and behavioral disorder. 
  
• In 2017 there were 375 cases of reported euthanasia of people whose deaths were not expected in the near future.
  
• In 2017 some 87 (3.76%) cases involved no physical suffering at all. [!!!] This included 14 cancer cases and 15 other cases of physical illness. There were also 18 cases of “polypathology” as well as 40 cases of mental ill health. The psychic suffering, apart from psychiatric conditions, included “addiction, loss of autonomy, loneliness, despair, loss of dignity, despair at the thought of losing ability to maintain social contacts, etc.”.
  
• Three children have so far been killed under the Belgian law in 2016 and 2017. These were a 17-year-old child who was suffering from muscular dystrophy; a nine-year-old child, who had a brain tumour, and an 11 year old child, who was suffering from cystic fibrosis.
  
• Between 2014 and 2017 two patients who were in an irreversible coma after a suicide attempt were euthanized based on an advance directive 5 months and 35 months respectively before the suicide attempt.
  
• A total of 201 people with psychiatric disorders were killed by euthanasia in Belgium between 2014 and 2017 including for mood disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder (73 cases); organic mental disorders, including dementia and Alzheimer’s (60 cases); personality and behavioural disorders (23 cases); neurotic disorders, and disorders related to stressors including posttraumatic stress disorder (16 cases); schizophrenia and psychotic disorders (11 cases); organic mental disorders, including autism (10 cases) and complex cases involving a combination of several categories (8 cases).

I note that there is no mention of joint-geriatric-euthanasia cases — elderly couples killed together for fear of future grief or not wanting to be widowed, etc. — of which I know of at least three cases.

The carnage so bloodlessly described in the Belgian report demonstrates vividly the consequences to a society when it generally accepts killing as a proper answer to human suffering — or even, it now seems, the fear of future suffering.

Those with eyes to see, let them see.

We Have Seen the Future . . .

It is Belgian

Belgium Euthanizes Hundreds of Disabled and Mentally Disabled People, Including Three Children

Alex Schadenberg
LifeSiteNews


The media is reporting that the Belgian euthanasia data has been released. The data shows that the number of euthanasia deaths continues to increase, euthanasia deaths for conditions related to aging have skyrocketed and three children died by euthanasia.

There is no sign that the problems of euthanasia without request and unreported euthanasia deaths has been reduced.

The basic data.
In 2016 there were 2028 reported euthanasia deaths up from 2021 in 2015.
In 2017 there were 2309 reported euthanasia deaths, a 14% increase from the previous year.
There were 954 reported Belgian euthanasia deaths in 2010 representing a 242% increase in 7 years.

Since 2010, Belgium has expanded euthanasia to include children, people with mental or behavioral conditions and people who are not dying but have chronic conditions. The data indicates that in 2016/17 there were, reportedly, 3 children who died by euthanasia, 77 people with mental or behavior conditions and 710 people with sight loss or incontinence or conditions related to disability or age.

When releasing the 2015 euthanasia data, Wim Distelmans, the chairman of the Euthanasia Evaluation and Control commission told the media that they cannot say for certain the actual number of euthanasia deaths. Distelmans stated: 

“Remember, there could be some euthanasia cases carried out but which are not declared so we cannot say for certain what the number is,”

Distelman’s comments were based on the research published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (March 19, 2015) on the euthanasia practice in Belgium that found:

The Death of Life in Belgium

Too Heavy To Be Borne

In June 2015, The New Yorker published an article by Rachel Aviv, entitled "The Death Treatment:
When should people with a non-terminal illness be helped to die?"

It is a long article, but a very necessary read for anyone who wants an insight into the mindset of secular humanism.  While the article deals specifically with the death culture in Belgium, it implicitly confronts every secularist in the West.  It also exposes what happens when a culture makes death a matter of human wilfulness.

We encourage everyone to read the full piece.  But, below are some excerpts--with a brief commentary.

 In Belgium, euthanasia is embraced as an emblem of enlightenment and progress, a sign that the country has extricated itself from its Catholic, patriarchal roots. Distelmans, [a euthanizer] who was brought up as a Catholic and then rejected the Church, told me that his work is inspired by an aversion to all forms of paternalism. “Who am I to convince patients that they have to suffer longer than they want?” he said.

When a human being is made the final and absolute authority in all things--as secular humanism does--all must bow before the sovereign.

Appeals to Pity Are Deceptive

Legalise Euthanasia, and Compassionate Society Dies Too

Paul Kelly
Editor-At-Large
The Australian

If you love your parents, respect your children, care for your society and think compassionately about your world then it is time to open your heart and brain to what happens when a jurisdiction legalises killing or, as it is called, euthanasia.

The justification for euthanasia lies in human rights, individual autonomy and relieving pain — all worthy ideas, and that may prompt the question: why then is euthanasia still opposed by most nations, most medical professional bodies around the world and the Australian Medical Association?

The reason is not hard to find. It is because crossing the threshold to euthanasia is the ultimate step in medical, moral and social terms. A polity is never the same afterwards and a society is never the same. It changes forever the doctor-patient bond. It is because, in brutal but honest terms, more people will be put at risk by the legislation than will be granted relief as beneficiaries.

The Twenty-Twenty Vision of Hindsight

A Nice Little Suburb

The intelligence and police authorities in Belgium have come under censorious criticism in recent days.  They have shown signs of incompetence.  The public is angry.  It appears that terrorists have found a welcome nest in Belgium.

It pays to remember that in such circumstances the public is a fickle beast.  On the one hand, it champions maximum licentiousness as a mark of sophistication and superior culture.  But, the instant it is threatened with real danger by conspirators with malice aforethought, it demands absolute competence and efficiency from its spies and intelligence services.  Such attitudes and responses bespeak petulant childishness.  The public should have been pressuring the authorities long before this most recent outbreak. 

It is now reported that most actual terror attacks in Europe have come from terrorists operating out of Brussels which is regarded as a metropolitan "safehouse" amongst the terrorist networks.  Moreover, more foreign fighters in Syria come from Belgium than any other European country, according to The Guardian.  It is not insignificant, albeit ironic, that Brussels styles itself as being the "heart of Europe".

One suburb in particular has been singled out.

Belgium's Heart of Darkness

Belgium’s Terrible Decline

After euthanasia-on-demand for children, the next step is euthanasia without-demand

Posted on  March 24, 2014 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

 

Joseph Conrad once coined the term “heart of darkness” to describe the atrocities of the Belgian colonial rule in what today is the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nowadays, however, the heart of darkness seems to be closer to home: in Belgium itself. By adopting a law that makes euthanasia available for minors, Belgium has surpassed its neighbours Netherlands and Luxembourg as the most euthanasia-friendly jurisdiction in the world, and must now be regarded as a world-wide champion of the Culture of Death.

The new law allows euthanasia for minors without any lower age limit, albeit with parental consent.

It is certainly strange that a legal system, in which children are below 14 are generally considered unable to form any legally relevant decision should nevertheless attach relevance to a declaration by which a child gives up its right to live.

The Long Dark of Moria

EU: Belgium introduces death penalty without trial for minors. It is called “euthanasia”.

Posted on | November 28, 2013 

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

A day of shame at the Belgian Senate: a country abandons civilization.

The culture of death, which is bound to lead to the self-destruction of any society that adopts it, is making great strides in Europe. The latest development is that the Belgian Senate has voted in favour of a new bill that extends the legalisation of “euthanasia” to minors. There is no lower age limit, nor is it a requirement for the victims of those so-called “mercy-killings” to have asked for such “mercy”.

Instead, the basis for killing these children is the choice they hypothetically would make if they only understood their condition. In reality, however, they will be killed either at the request of their parents, or may be even (for example if the parents are unavailable, or if they unable or unwilling to make such a request) at the initiative of a public administrative body. In other words, this is a death penalty without trial, without criminal charges, without a right to defence.