18% of deaths in Belgium: assisted suicide/euthansia

From National Review online - Wesley Smith's excellent column.

Death panels?

A study out of Flanders, published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that 18% of patients deaths come either from lethal injection/assisted suicide or from being put into a deep coma and left to die.

So how many of those people "put into a deep coma and left to die" were actually euthanized? We can't tell.

“Recent Trends in Euthanasia and Other End-of-Life Practices in Belgium,” reports that 6.3% of Flanders’ deaths involved “physician-assisted death.” This term was defined as lethal injection at the request of the patient (“euthanasia”), assisted suicide, and “death without explicit request.”

 

But there is more: A full 12% die from “full continuous deep sedation until death.” Palliative sedation is not the same thing,meaning most of this involves “terminal sedation,” putting in a coma and denied food and fluids until death, a form of beneath-the-surface euthanasia.(For more details on this issue, hit this link.)

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