The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia in 2002.
In this episode, we explore how this happened, what has happened since, and the ethical, legal, and societal dimensions of this controversial topic.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the sensitive but important subject of euthanasia.
[00:00:27] Specifically, we are going to be talking about The Netherlands, the first country to legalise euthanasia, and a country in which 1 in 20 people who die every year do so by choice.
[00:00:40] As you might expect, we will be covering some sensitive material, so please take this as a little warning as we will be talking about life and death.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get started and talk about Euthanasia In The Netherlands.
[00:00:57] King George VI of Britain, Sigmund Freud and Socrates might seem to have little in common.
[00:01:04] One was a British king, one was the Austrian father of psychoanalysis, and another was a Greek philosopher.
[00:01:12] They lived centuries apart, in different countries and societies, and were clearly very different people.
[00:01:20] But they had one thing in common.
[00:01:23] They died through euthanasia.
[00:01:26] But how they did this underlines quite the variety of this term that might seem simple, euthanasia.
[00:01:34] King George VI of Britain was given a lethal injection of morphine and cocaine by his doctor. He was suffering from lung cancer, and to ease his pain in his final hours, his doctors decided to give the terminally ill man this cocktail of drugs, killing him.
[00:01:54] Morphine also played a role in Sigmund Freud’s death. He was suffering, in agonising pain from throat cancer, and he asked his friend Max Shur to give him a large morphine injection, which killed him.
[00:02:10] Socrates was a little different. He was neither old nor physically ill. He had been sentenced to death by an Athenian judge after being found guilty of corrupting the young. His sentence was to drink poison, made out of a toxic plant called hemlock.
[00:02:28] Now, you are probably thinking that this doesn’t sound like euthanasia, but it technically was. Socrates was handed the poison by an executioner, and then he drank it himself, so he brought about his own death, even if he didn’t wish for it.
[00:02:48] Euthanasia has been in the news a lot in the past months, with two unrelated cases in the Netherlands, the first of a former Prime Minister who chose to end his life at the age of 93, together with his wife, and of a young Dutch woman, Zoraya ter Beek, who has chosen to end her life at the age of 28.
[00:03:12] We’ll talk more about these two cases in a little bit, but first it’s important to go through some definitions of what euthanasia is and the different categories of it before we come back to the unique case of The Netherlands.
[00:03:29] If you know your Greek, you will remember that the word “euthanasia” comes from “eu”, meaning good, and “thanatos”, meaning death. In other words, it means a good or happy death, a wished-for death.
[00:03:47] There are three categories of euthanasia: voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary.
[00:03:55] Voluntary involves the explicit request or consent of a terminally ill or suffering individual to end their life. In other words, the person decides that they wish to end their life, it is their decision.
[00:04:11] Non-voluntary involves ending the life of an individual who is unable to give consent, such as an infant, someone in a vegetative state, like a coma, or an adult with advanced dementia or severe mental incapacities. In other words, the person does not have the ability to decide for themselves; someone else does it for them, but it is in their best interests.
[00:04:37] And finally, there is involuntary.
[00:04:41] This is when a person’s life is ended against their will, often without their knowledge or consent. In other words, it's when someone’s life is ended even though that person might not want to die.
[00:04:55] Now, the lines between these categories, particularly between non-voluntary and involuntary, are often blurry, which is one of the reasons why it is such a tricky legal, moral and ethical area.
[00:05:11] And we can even go one level deeper with this categorisation, we can split euthanasia into active and passive.
[00:05:21] Active euthanasia involves a person killing themself. This could be a doctor prescribing them a lethal dose of drugs, but that patient administering it themselves. You might have heard this referred to as “assisted suicide”.
[00:05:36] Or it could involve the doctor administering the lethal dose of whatever it is, so the person’s life is ended by a doctor.
[00:05:46] Passive euthanasia, on the other hand, is the withdrawal of life-saving care from someone, which leads to their death.
[00:05:55] For example, if someone is in a vegetative state, on a life support machine, their family may opt to “pull the plug”, as the expression goes, removing their life support and thus ending their life.
[00:06:09] In every case, the outcome is the same, but the legal treatments are very different.
[00:06:17] In some countries, all forms of euthanasia, including the withdrawal of life-support, are illegal, and a doctor can be put on trial for murder if someone dies in this way under their watch.
[00:06:31] In others, such as The Netherlands, most are legal, including non-assisted voluntary euthanasia, as in the case of Zoraya ter Beek, the 28-year-old Dutch woman who has chosen to end her life.
[00:06:46] The only thing that is illegal in every country in the world is involuntary euthanasia, the killing of someone who does not give their consent.
[00:06:56] Some countries did legalise this, for example, Nazi Germany, when an estimated 300,000 people with mental or physical “defects” were killed, but these are all looked back on as horrific experiments intended to “cleanse” a population of people who were considered less desirable, for whatever reason.
[00:07:18] Fortunately, non-voluntary euthanasia is treated as a form of murder in every legal system around the world today.
[00:07:27] Now, as to the legality of different types of euthanasia, this comes down to the religious, moral and ethical views of the societies and people that make the laws.
[00:07:39] In most Islamic countries, for example, all forms of euthanasia are forbidden, as Islam states that all human life is given by Allah, so another human shouldn’t be able to take it away.
[00:07:53] In countries with a strong Roman Catholic population, it is a similar story, with all forms of euthanasia tending to be prohibited. The Catholic Church’s official position is that all forms of euthanasia are murder, for a similar reason to Islam’s.
[00:08:12] And as a general rule, the more god-fearing a population, the less likely euthanasia is to be legal in that country.
[00:08:21] There are many exceptions to this, for example, Spain and Colombia both have majority Catholic populations but allow euthanasia, but as a general rule, the more present religion is in the day-to-day lives of a country's citizens, the less likely that country is to allow euthanasia.
[00:08:41] And this brings us to the case of The Netherlands. The Dutch have proved themselves to be trailblazers in many different ways, adopting legal frameworks for many things that used to be illegal, and often are still illegal, in other countries.
[00:08:57] From same-sex marriage to drug use and prostitution, the Netherlands has shown a tolerance for behaviours that people clearly want to engage in, but were previously considered illegal.
[00:09:11] And euthanasia evidently falls into that category. It is a sad reality that 700,000 people across the world kill themselves every year, that’s one person every 40 seconds, making up 1.3% of all deaths worldwide.
[00:09:29] Unfortunately, for almost a million people a year, life is so unbearable that they choose to end it.
[00:09:36] And in the early 1970s, a Dutch doctor called Andries Postma, found himself dealing with a situation like this. His elderly mother-in-law was severely handicapped, had a brain haemorrhage, was deaf, and couldn’t speak.
[00:09:53] She was suffering, in great pain, and had repeatedly pleaded with her daughter, who was also a doctor, to end her life.
[00:10:03] Eventually, her daughter agreed, and together with her husband, injected her with morphine, killing her mother out of compassion.
[00:10:13] The daughter told the director of the nursing home what had happened, and she and her husband found themselves facing criminal charges, and up to 12 years in prison.
[00:10:25] This became a national case in The Netherlands, which still had a strong Christian tradition at the time. It ignited passionate debate and ultimately paved the way for the full legalisation of euthanasia, which came in 2002.
[00:10:41] So, what does modern Dutch law actually say?
[00:10:46] According to the official website of The Netherlands, the only time when a life can be legally ended is “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:11:04] And although euthanasia is now legal in several other European countries, the wording of the Dutch law is the most liberal.
[00:11:13] In Spain, for example, the law states that people with "serious and incurable" diseases that cause "unbearable suffering" can legally apply for euthanasia, whereas the Dutch law doesn’t require the person to have any kind of disease at all.
[00:11:31] And this was what made the news about Zoraya ter Beek particularly shocking to many.
[00:11:38] On April 1st of this year, of 2024, The Free Press published an article with the headline ‘I’m 28. And I’m Scheduled to Die in May.’
[00:11:51] The picture it led with was of ter Beek being cuddled by her partner, looking straight at the camera. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she didn’t look sad either.
[00:12:03] And in the interview, she revealed her pain, that despite being in a loving relationship, she was deeply depressed, she had been feeling this way for years, and she wanted to end her life.
[00:12:18] And…legally, she was allowed to.
[00:12:21] She met the legal definition of experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement. She had always felt like this, she had no prospect that she would ever improve. A doctor had assessed her over a long period of time and came to this conclusion.
[00:12:39] She had the right to die, and perhaps by the time you listen to this, there will be no more Zoraya ter Beek.
[00:12:49] Reading through the reactions to the article, as you might imagine, there were passionate voices on both sides.
[00:12:57] To many, this seemed like a dangerous step, allowing young people to “check out” of life, and glorifying killing themselves, glorifying the ultimate irreversible decision.
[00:13:10] To others, it was a welcome example of the fact that depression and mental illness can cause just as much suffering as any kind of physical illness, and that it should be this woman’s choice and hers alone whether she can live with the pain that it brings.
[00:13:27] On the very other end of the spectrum was another famous case from The Netherlands this year of Dries and Eugenie van Agt, who were both 93 years old.
[00:13:38] Dries van Agt was the Dutch prime minister from 1977 to 1982, so, shortly after the landmark case of Dr Postma and his wife.
[00:13:50] Both he and his wife of 70 years were in very poor health, but did not want to die and leave the other alone.
[00:13:59] Instead, they chose to end their lives together, hand in hand, and legally they were allowed to do so.
[00:14:08] Now, these are just two cases, one of almost 10,000 euthanasia cases a year in the Netherlands, each with unique circumstances, and each involving multiple medical professionals before they are approved.
[00:14:23] So, is this the future, a sign of a more humane and caring society in which people are not forced to suffer?
[00:14:31] Or is it a step down a dangerous path?
[00:14:36] To the proponents of euthanasia, the main argument boils down to self-determination; the right of an individual to control their destiny, to do whatever they want with their lives, so long as they do not harm others.
[00:14:51] There is also the question of compassion; that it is far kinder to let someone die rather than to force them to continue to live against their will.
[00:15:03] And moving into what might seem like a more practical argument, some proponents of euthanasia point to the fact that directing medical resources towards people who do not want to live is morally wrong, as these could be used to help save or prolong the lives of people who do not want to die.
[00:15:24] On the other side of the divide, the greatest criticisms of euthanasia typically come from those approaching the subject from a religious perspective, with most major world religions opposing euthanasia in all forms, arguing that all life is sacred and it should not be a person’s right to take away what has been given to them by God.
[00:15:47] And even disregarding religion for a moment, other critics point to the potential for abuse, that euthanasia becomes a sort of more socially acceptable form of suicide, and encourages people to end their lives when they might otherwise not have.
[00:16:07] Similarly, there are arguments that legalising and normalising euthanasia, especially among people who are not physically sick, will place society on a slippery slope.
[00:16:19] Remember, the Dutch law states that euthanasia is legal “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:16:34] “Unbearable suffering” is deliberately unspecific, so if this kind of wording becomes the norm for euthanasia legislation worldwide, this sets a dangerous precedent, so the critics say. Unbearable suffering could be because of some crippling disease, but could it also be because of a bad break-up? Fear about climate change? Getting badly into debt?
[00:17:01] To the critics of this legislation, “unbearable suffering” feels unbearable and like it has no prospect of improvement, but this isn’t always the case. Normalising euthanasia is going to result in a load of people ending their lives who might otherwise have gone on to happy and healthy futures.
[00:17:23] But, to these critics, The Netherlands provides a useful blueprint on what happens when you legalise euthanasia, or at least, the country has a now 20-year track record of what happens when you allow people to choose to end their lives.
[00:17:40] So, what does happen?
[00:17:43] Today, euthanasia accounts for between 4 and 5% of deaths in The Netherlands.
[00:17:50] Are these people who would have died shortly after anyway, like the mother-in-law of Andries Postma or the 93-year-old Prime Minister and his wife? Or are they people like Zoraya ter Beek?
[00:18:03] In other words, are people choosing to die who would otherwise have lived?
[00:18:09] The statistics show that since euthanasia was legalised, the death rate in the Netherlands didn’t increase, it actually decreased slightly.
[00:18:18] Now, this is not to suggest that this had anything to do with euthanasia, but to those who warned that it might set a dangerous precedent and lead to many more people deciding to end their lives because euthanasia was legal, this simply hasn’t happened in the Netherlands.
[00:18:37] In the case of The Netherlands, legalising euthanasia was controversial when it was first proposed, but it has proved popular with its citizens, and there are calls to go even further.
[00:18:49] One recent poll suggested that 80% of Dutch people would support a bill legalising euthanasia if someone aged over 75 believed that their life was “complete”.
[00:19:02] This would clearly be a big step, as it wouldn’t require any form of unbearable suffering.
[00:19:10] To its supporters, it is the logical next step towards a more compassionate society.
[00:19:16] But to its critics, this is one step too far, a sign of a society that has lost its direction.
[00:19:25] In many other progressive policies, where the Dutch have gone, other countries have followed.
[00:19:32] In 2001, a year before euthanasia was legalised, The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and since then 35 different countries have followed suit.
[00:19:46] But as far as euthanasia is concerned, despite the Netherlands’ 20-year history of legalisation, fewer than a dozen countries worldwide have legalised it.
[00:19:57] Whatever your thoughts on the rights and wrongs of euthanasia, the Dutch example gives us a window into a society in which people have the right to choose when to end their lives.
[00:20:08] Whether that’s a utopia or a dystopia, well, that is for you to decide.
[00:20:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Euthanasia In The Netherlands, and on euthanasia more generally.
[00:20:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new about this subject that I imagine is also a talking point in your country.
[00:20:31] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:20:34] Is euthanasia legal in your country? If so, when was it legalised, and what do people think about it?
[00:20:41] And where do you stand on the issue?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:00] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the sensitive but important subject of euthanasia.
[00:00:27] Specifically, we are going to be talking about The Netherlands, the first country to legalise euthanasia, and a country in which 1 in 20 people who die every year do so by choice.
[00:00:40] As you might expect, we will be covering some sensitive material, so please take this as a little warning as we will be talking about life and death.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get started and talk about Euthanasia In The Netherlands.
[00:00:57] King George VI of Britain, Sigmund Freud and Socrates might seem to have little in common.
[00:01:04] One was a British king, one was the Austrian father of psychoanalysis, and another was a Greek philosopher.
[00:01:12] They lived centuries apart, in different countries and societies, and were clearly very different people.
[00:01:20] But they had one thing in common.
[00:01:23] They died through euthanasia.
[00:01:26] But how they did this underlines quite the variety of this term that might seem simple, euthanasia.
[00:01:34] King George VI of Britain was given a lethal injection of morphine and cocaine by his doctor. He was suffering from lung cancer, and to ease his pain in his final hours, his doctors decided to give the terminally ill man this cocktail of drugs, killing him.
[00:01:54] Morphine also played a role in Sigmund Freud’s death. He was suffering, in agonising pain from throat cancer, and he asked his friend Max Shur to give him a large morphine injection, which killed him.
[00:02:10] Socrates was a little different. He was neither old nor physically ill. He had been sentenced to death by an Athenian judge after being found guilty of corrupting the young. His sentence was to drink poison, made out of a toxic plant called hemlock.
[00:02:28] Now, you are probably thinking that this doesn’t sound like euthanasia, but it technically was. Socrates was handed the poison by an executioner, and then he drank it himself, so he brought about his own death, even if he didn’t wish for it.
[00:02:48] Euthanasia has been in the news a lot in the past months, with two unrelated cases in the Netherlands, the first of a former Prime Minister who chose to end his life at the age of 93, together with his wife, and of a young Dutch woman, Zoraya ter Beek, who has chosen to end her life at the age of 28.
[00:03:12] We’ll talk more about these two cases in a little bit, but first it’s important to go through some definitions of what euthanasia is and the different categories of it before we come back to the unique case of The Netherlands.
[00:03:29] If you know your Greek, you will remember that the word “euthanasia” comes from “eu”, meaning good, and “thanatos”, meaning death. In other words, it means a good or happy death, a wished-for death.
[00:03:47] There are three categories of euthanasia: voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary.
[00:03:55] Voluntary involves the explicit request or consent of a terminally ill or suffering individual to end their life. In other words, the person decides that they wish to end their life, it is their decision.
[00:04:11] Non-voluntary involves ending the life of an individual who is unable to give consent, such as an infant, someone in a vegetative state, like a coma, or an adult with advanced dementia or severe mental incapacities. In other words, the person does not have the ability to decide for themselves; someone else does it for them, but it is in their best interests.
[00:04:37] And finally, there is involuntary.
[00:04:41] This is when a person’s life is ended against their will, often without their knowledge or consent. In other words, it's when someone’s life is ended even though that person might not want to die.
[00:04:55] Now, the lines between these categories, particularly between non-voluntary and involuntary, are often blurry, which is one of the reasons why it is such a tricky legal, moral and ethical area.
[00:05:11] And we can even go one level deeper with this categorisation, we can split euthanasia into active and passive.
[00:05:21] Active euthanasia involves a person killing themself. This could be a doctor prescribing them a lethal dose of drugs, but that patient administering it themselves. You might have heard this referred to as “assisted suicide”.
[00:05:36] Or it could involve the doctor administering the lethal dose of whatever it is, so the person’s life is ended by a doctor.
[00:05:46] Passive euthanasia, on the other hand, is the withdrawal of life-saving care from someone, which leads to their death.
[00:05:55] For example, if someone is in a vegetative state, on a life support machine, their family may opt to “pull the plug”, as the expression goes, removing their life support and thus ending their life.
[00:06:09] In every case, the outcome is the same, but the legal treatments are very different.
[00:06:17] In some countries, all forms of euthanasia, including the withdrawal of life-support, are illegal, and a doctor can be put on trial for murder if someone dies in this way under their watch.
[00:06:31] In others, such as The Netherlands, most are legal, including non-assisted voluntary euthanasia, as in the case of Zoraya ter Beek, the 28-year-old Dutch woman who has chosen to end her life.
[00:06:46] The only thing that is illegal in every country in the world is involuntary euthanasia, the killing of someone who does not give their consent.
[00:06:56] Some countries did legalise this, for example, Nazi Germany, when an estimated 300,000 people with mental or physical “defects” were killed, but these are all looked back on as horrific experiments intended to “cleanse” a population of people who were considered less desirable, for whatever reason.
[00:07:18] Fortunately, non-voluntary euthanasia is treated as a form of murder in every legal system around the world today.
[00:07:27] Now, as to the legality of different types of euthanasia, this comes down to the religious, moral and ethical views of the societies and people that make the laws.
[00:07:39] In most Islamic countries, for example, all forms of euthanasia are forbidden, as Islam states that all human life is given by Allah, so another human shouldn’t be able to take it away.
[00:07:53] In countries with a strong Roman Catholic population, it is a similar story, with all forms of euthanasia tending to be prohibited. The Catholic Church’s official position is that all forms of euthanasia are murder, for a similar reason to Islam’s.
[00:08:12] And as a general rule, the more god-fearing a population, the less likely euthanasia is to be legal in that country.
[00:08:21] There are many exceptions to this, for example, Spain and Colombia both have majority Catholic populations but allow euthanasia, but as a general rule, the more present religion is in the day-to-day lives of a country's citizens, the less likely that country is to allow euthanasia.
[00:08:41] And this brings us to the case of The Netherlands. The Dutch have proved themselves to be trailblazers in many different ways, adopting legal frameworks for many things that used to be illegal, and often are still illegal, in other countries.
[00:08:57] From same-sex marriage to drug use and prostitution, the Netherlands has shown a tolerance for behaviours that people clearly want to engage in, but were previously considered illegal.
[00:09:11] And euthanasia evidently falls into that category. It is a sad reality that 700,000 people across the world kill themselves every year, that’s one person every 40 seconds, making up 1.3% of all deaths worldwide.
[00:09:29] Unfortunately, for almost a million people a year, life is so unbearable that they choose to end it.
[00:09:36] And in the early 1970s, a Dutch doctor called Andries Postma, found himself dealing with a situation like this. His elderly mother-in-law was severely handicapped, had a brain haemorrhage, was deaf, and couldn’t speak.
[00:09:53] She was suffering, in great pain, and had repeatedly pleaded with her daughter, who was also a doctor, to end her life.
[00:10:03] Eventually, her daughter agreed, and together with her husband, injected her with morphine, killing her mother out of compassion.
[00:10:13] The daughter told the director of the nursing home what had happened, and she and her husband found themselves facing criminal charges, and up to 12 years in prison.
[00:10:25] This became a national case in The Netherlands, which still had a strong Christian tradition at the time. It ignited passionate debate and ultimately paved the way for the full legalisation of euthanasia, which came in 2002.
[00:10:41] So, what does modern Dutch law actually say?
[00:10:46] According to the official website of The Netherlands, the only time when a life can be legally ended is “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:11:04] And although euthanasia is now legal in several other European countries, the wording of the Dutch law is the most liberal.
[00:11:13] In Spain, for example, the law states that people with "serious and incurable" diseases that cause "unbearable suffering" can legally apply for euthanasia, whereas the Dutch law doesn’t require the person to have any kind of disease at all.
[00:11:31] And this was what made the news about Zoraya ter Beek particularly shocking to many.
[00:11:38] On April 1st of this year, of 2024, The Free Press published an article with the headline ‘I’m 28. And I’m Scheduled to Die in May.’
[00:11:51] The picture it led with was of ter Beek being cuddled by her partner, looking straight at the camera. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she didn’t look sad either.
[00:12:03] And in the interview, she revealed her pain, that despite being in a loving relationship, she was deeply depressed, she had been feeling this way for years, and she wanted to end her life.
[00:12:18] And…legally, she was allowed to.
[00:12:21] She met the legal definition of experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement. She had always felt like this, she had no prospect that she would ever improve. A doctor had assessed her over a long period of time and came to this conclusion.
[00:12:39] She had the right to die, and perhaps by the time you listen to this, there will be no more Zoraya ter Beek.
[00:12:49] Reading through the reactions to the article, as you might imagine, there were passionate voices on both sides.
[00:12:57] To many, this seemed like a dangerous step, allowing young people to “check out” of life, and glorifying killing themselves, glorifying the ultimate irreversible decision.
[00:13:10] To others, it was a welcome example of the fact that depression and mental illness can cause just as much suffering as any kind of physical illness, and that it should be this woman’s choice and hers alone whether she can live with the pain that it brings.
[00:13:27] On the very other end of the spectrum was another famous case from The Netherlands this year of Dries and Eugenie van Agt, who were both 93 years old.
[00:13:38] Dries van Agt was the Dutch prime minister from 1977 to 1982, so, shortly after the landmark case of Dr Postma and his wife.
[00:13:50] Both he and his wife of 70 years were in very poor health, but did not want to die and leave the other alone.
[00:13:59] Instead, they chose to end their lives together, hand in hand, and legally they were allowed to do so.
[00:14:08] Now, these are just two cases, one of almost 10,000 euthanasia cases a year in the Netherlands, each with unique circumstances, and each involving multiple medical professionals before they are approved.
[00:14:23] So, is this the future, a sign of a more humane and caring society in which people are not forced to suffer?
[00:14:31] Or is it a step down a dangerous path?
[00:14:36] To the proponents of euthanasia, the main argument boils down to self-determination; the right of an individual to control their destiny, to do whatever they want with their lives, so long as they do not harm others.
[00:14:51] There is also the question of compassion; that it is far kinder to let someone die rather than to force them to continue to live against their will.
[00:15:03] And moving into what might seem like a more practical argument, some proponents of euthanasia point to the fact that directing medical resources towards people who do not want to live is morally wrong, as these could be used to help save or prolong the lives of people who do not want to die.
[00:15:24] On the other side of the divide, the greatest criticisms of euthanasia typically come from those approaching the subject from a religious perspective, with most major world religions opposing euthanasia in all forms, arguing that all life is sacred and it should not be a person’s right to take away what has been given to them by God.
[00:15:47] And even disregarding religion for a moment, other critics point to the potential for abuse, that euthanasia becomes a sort of more socially acceptable form of suicide, and encourages people to end their lives when they might otherwise not have.
[00:16:07] Similarly, there are arguments that legalising and normalising euthanasia, especially among people who are not physically sick, will place society on a slippery slope.
[00:16:19] Remember, the Dutch law states that euthanasia is legal “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:16:34] “Unbearable suffering” is deliberately unspecific, so if this kind of wording becomes the norm for euthanasia legislation worldwide, this sets a dangerous precedent, so the critics say. Unbearable suffering could be because of some crippling disease, but could it also be because of a bad break-up? Fear about climate change? Getting badly into debt?
[00:17:01] To the critics of this legislation, “unbearable suffering” feels unbearable and like it has no prospect of improvement, but this isn’t always the case. Normalising euthanasia is going to result in a load of people ending their lives who might otherwise have gone on to happy and healthy futures.
[00:17:23] But, to these critics, The Netherlands provides a useful blueprint on what happens when you legalise euthanasia, or at least, the country has a now 20-year track record of what happens when you allow people to choose to end their lives.
[00:17:40] So, what does happen?
[00:17:43] Today, euthanasia accounts for between 4 and 5% of deaths in The Netherlands.
[00:17:50] Are these people who would have died shortly after anyway, like the mother-in-law of Andries Postma or the 93-year-old Prime Minister and his wife? Or are they people like Zoraya ter Beek?
[00:18:03] In other words, are people choosing to die who would otherwise have lived?
[00:18:09] The statistics show that since euthanasia was legalised, the death rate in the Netherlands didn’t increase, it actually decreased slightly.
[00:18:18] Now, this is not to suggest that this had anything to do with euthanasia, but to those who warned that it might set a dangerous precedent and lead to many more people deciding to end their lives because euthanasia was legal, this simply hasn’t happened in the Netherlands.
[00:18:37] In the case of The Netherlands, legalising euthanasia was controversial when it was first proposed, but it has proved popular with its citizens, and there are calls to go even further.
[00:18:49] One recent poll suggested that 80% of Dutch people would support a bill legalising euthanasia if someone aged over 75 believed that their life was “complete”.
[00:19:02] This would clearly be a big step, as it wouldn’t require any form of unbearable suffering.
[00:19:10] To its supporters, it is the logical next step towards a more compassionate society.
[00:19:16] But to its critics, this is one step too far, a sign of a society that has lost its direction.
[00:19:25] In many other progressive policies, where the Dutch have gone, other countries have followed.
[00:19:32] In 2001, a year before euthanasia was legalised, The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and since then 35 different countries have followed suit.
[00:19:46] But as far as euthanasia is concerned, despite the Netherlands’ 20-year history of legalisation, fewer than a dozen countries worldwide have legalised it.
[00:19:57] Whatever your thoughts on the rights and wrongs of euthanasia, the Dutch example gives us a window into a society in which people have the right to choose when to end their lives.
[00:20:08] Whether that’s a utopia or a dystopia, well, that is for you to decide.
[00:20:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Euthanasia In The Netherlands, and on euthanasia more generally.
[00:20:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new about this subject that I imagine is also a talking point in your country.
[00:20:31] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:20:34] Is euthanasia legal in your country? If so, when was it legalised, and what do people think about it?
[00:20:41] And where do you stand on the issue?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:00] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the sensitive but important subject of euthanasia.
[00:00:27] Specifically, we are going to be talking about The Netherlands, the first country to legalise euthanasia, and a country in which 1 in 20 people who die every year do so by choice.
[00:00:40] As you might expect, we will be covering some sensitive material, so please take this as a little warning as we will be talking about life and death.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get started and talk about Euthanasia In The Netherlands.
[00:00:57] King George VI of Britain, Sigmund Freud and Socrates might seem to have little in common.
[00:01:04] One was a British king, one was the Austrian father of psychoanalysis, and another was a Greek philosopher.
[00:01:12] They lived centuries apart, in different countries and societies, and were clearly very different people.
[00:01:20] But they had one thing in common.
[00:01:23] They died through euthanasia.
[00:01:26] But how they did this underlines quite the variety of this term that might seem simple, euthanasia.
[00:01:34] King George VI of Britain was given a lethal injection of morphine and cocaine by his doctor. He was suffering from lung cancer, and to ease his pain in his final hours, his doctors decided to give the terminally ill man this cocktail of drugs, killing him.
[00:01:54] Morphine also played a role in Sigmund Freud’s death. He was suffering, in agonising pain from throat cancer, and he asked his friend Max Shur to give him a large morphine injection, which killed him.
[00:02:10] Socrates was a little different. He was neither old nor physically ill. He had been sentenced to death by an Athenian judge after being found guilty of corrupting the young. His sentence was to drink poison, made out of a toxic plant called hemlock.
[00:02:28] Now, you are probably thinking that this doesn’t sound like euthanasia, but it technically was. Socrates was handed the poison by an executioner, and then he drank it himself, so he brought about his own death, even if he didn’t wish for it.
[00:02:48] Euthanasia has been in the news a lot in the past months, with two unrelated cases in the Netherlands, the first of a former Prime Minister who chose to end his life at the age of 93, together with his wife, and of a young Dutch woman, Zoraya ter Beek, who has chosen to end her life at the age of 28.
[00:03:12] We’ll talk more about these two cases in a little bit, but first it’s important to go through some definitions of what euthanasia is and the different categories of it before we come back to the unique case of The Netherlands.
[00:03:29] If you know your Greek, you will remember that the word “euthanasia” comes from “eu”, meaning good, and “thanatos”, meaning death. In other words, it means a good or happy death, a wished-for death.
[00:03:47] There are three categories of euthanasia: voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary.
[00:03:55] Voluntary involves the explicit request or consent of a terminally ill or suffering individual to end their life. In other words, the person decides that they wish to end their life, it is their decision.
[00:04:11] Non-voluntary involves ending the life of an individual who is unable to give consent, such as an infant, someone in a vegetative state, like a coma, or an adult with advanced dementia or severe mental incapacities. In other words, the person does not have the ability to decide for themselves; someone else does it for them, but it is in their best interests.
[00:04:37] And finally, there is involuntary.
[00:04:41] This is when a person’s life is ended against their will, often without their knowledge or consent. In other words, it's when someone’s life is ended even though that person might not want to die.
[00:04:55] Now, the lines between these categories, particularly between non-voluntary and involuntary, are often blurry, which is one of the reasons why it is such a tricky legal, moral and ethical area.
[00:05:11] And we can even go one level deeper with this categorisation, we can split euthanasia into active and passive.
[00:05:21] Active euthanasia involves a person killing themself. This could be a doctor prescribing them a lethal dose of drugs, but that patient administering it themselves. You might have heard this referred to as “assisted suicide”.
[00:05:36] Or it could involve the doctor administering the lethal dose of whatever it is, so the person’s life is ended by a doctor.
[00:05:46] Passive euthanasia, on the other hand, is the withdrawal of life-saving care from someone, which leads to their death.
[00:05:55] For example, if someone is in a vegetative state, on a life support machine, their family may opt to “pull the plug”, as the expression goes, removing their life support and thus ending their life.
[00:06:09] In every case, the outcome is the same, but the legal treatments are very different.
[00:06:17] In some countries, all forms of euthanasia, including the withdrawal of life-support, are illegal, and a doctor can be put on trial for murder if someone dies in this way under their watch.
[00:06:31] In others, such as The Netherlands, most are legal, including non-assisted voluntary euthanasia, as in the case of Zoraya ter Beek, the 28-year-old Dutch woman who has chosen to end her life.
[00:06:46] The only thing that is illegal in every country in the world is involuntary euthanasia, the killing of someone who does not give their consent.
[00:06:56] Some countries did legalise this, for example, Nazi Germany, when an estimated 300,000 people with mental or physical “defects” were killed, but these are all looked back on as horrific experiments intended to “cleanse” a population of people who were considered less desirable, for whatever reason.
[00:07:18] Fortunately, non-voluntary euthanasia is treated as a form of murder in every legal system around the world today.
[00:07:27] Now, as to the legality of different types of euthanasia, this comes down to the religious, moral and ethical views of the societies and people that make the laws.
[00:07:39] In most Islamic countries, for example, all forms of euthanasia are forbidden, as Islam states that all human life is given by Allah, so another human shouldn’t be able to take it away.
[00:07:53] In countries with a strong Roman Catholic population, it is a similar story, with all forms of euthanasia tending to be prohibited. The Catholic Church’s official position is that all forms of euthanasia are murder, for a similar reason to Islam’s.
[00:08:12] And as a general rule, the more god-fearing a population, the less likely euthanasia is to be legal in that country.
[00:08:21] There are many exceptions to this, for example, Spain and Colombia both have majority Catholic populations but allow euthanasia, but as a general rule, the more present religion is in the day-to-day lives of a country's citizens, the less likely that country is to allow euthanasia.
[00:08:41] And this brings us to the case of The Netherlands. The Dutch have proved themselves to be trailblazers in many different ways, adopting legal frameworks for many things that used to be illegal, and often are still illegal, in other countries.
[00:08:57] From same-sex marriage to drug use and prostitution, the Netherlands has shown a tolerance for behaviours that people clearly want to engage in, but were previously considered illegal.
[00:09:11] And euthanasia evidently falls into that category. It is a sad reality that 700,000 people across the world kill themselves every year, that’s one person every 40 seconds, making up 1.3% of all deaths worldwide.
[00:09:29] Unfortunately, for almost a million people a year, life is so unbearable that they choose to end it.
[00:09:36] And in the early 1970s, a Dutch doctor called Andries Postma, found himself dealing with a situation like this. His elderly mother-in-law was severely handicapped, had a brain haemorrhage, was deaf, and couldn’t speak.
[00:09:53] She was suffering, in great pain, and had repeatedly pleaded with her daughter, who was also a doctor, to end her life.
[00:10:03] Eventually, her daughter agreed, and together with her husband, injected her with morphine, killing her mother out of compassion.
[00:10:13] The daughter told the director of the nursing home what had happened, and she and her husband found themselves facing criminal charges, and up to 12 years in prison.
[00:10:25] This became a national case in The Netherlands, which still had a strong Christian tradition at the time. It ignited passionate debate and ultimately paved the way for the full legalisation of euthanasia, which came in 2002.
[00:10:41] So, what does modern Dutch law actually say?
[00:10:46] According to the official website of The Netherlands, the only time when a life can be legally ended is “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:11:04] And although euthanasia is now legal in several other European countries, the wording of the Dutch law is the most liberal.
[00:11:13] In Spain, for example, the law states that people with "serious and incurable" diseases that cause "unbearable suffering" can legally apply for euthanasia, whereas the Dutch law doesn’t require the person to have any kind of disease at all.
[00:11:31] And this was what made the news about Zoraya ter Beek particularly shocking to many.
[00:11:38] On April 1st of this year, of 2024, The Free Press published an article with the headline ‘I’m 28. And I’m Scheduled to Die in May.’
[00:11:51] The picture it led with was of ter Beek being cuddled by her partner, looking straight at the camera. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but she didn’t look sad either.
[00:12:03] And in the interview, she revealed her pain, that despite being in a loving relationship, she was deeply depressed, she had been feeling this way for years, and she wanted to end her life.
[00:12:18] And…legally, she was allowed to.
[00:12:21] She met the legal definition of experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement. She had always felt like this, she had no prospect that she would ever improve. A doctor had assessed her over a long period of time and came to this conclusion.
[00:12:39] She had the right to die, and perhaps by the time you listen to this, there will be no more Zoraya ter Beek.
[00:12:49] Reading through the reactions to the article, as you might imagine, there were passionate voices on both sides.
[00:12:57] To many, this seemed like a dangerous step, allowing young people to “check out” of life, and glorifying killing themselves, glorifying the ultimate irreversible decision.
[00:13:10] To others, it was a welcome example of the fact that depression and mental illness can cause just as much suffering as any kind of physical illness, and that it should be this woman’s choice and hers alone whether she can live with the pain that it brings.
[00:13:27] On the very other end of the spectrum was another famous case from The Netherlands this year of Dries and Eugenie van Agt, who were both 93 years old.
[00:13:38] Dries van Agt was the Dutch prime minister from 1977 to 1982, so, shortly after the landmark case of Dr Postma and his wife.
[00:13:50] Both he and his wife of 70 years were in very poor health, but did not want to die and leave the other alone.
[00:13:59] Instead, they chose to end their lives together, hand in hand, and legally they were allowed to do so.
[00:14:08] Now, these are just two cases, one of almost 10,000 euthanasia cases a year in the Netherlands, each with unique circumstances, and each involving multiple medical professionals before they are approved.
[00:14:23] So, is this the future, a sign of a more humane and caring society in which people are not forced to suffer?
[00:14:31] Or is it a step down a dangerous path?
[00:14:36] To the proponents of euthanasia, the main argument boils down to self-determination; the right of an individual to control their destiny, to do whatever they want with their lives, so long as they do not harm others.
[00:14:51] There is also the question of compassion; that it is far kinder to let someone die rather than to force them to continue to live against their will.
[00:15:03] And moving into what might seem like a more practical argument, some proponents of euthanasia point to the fact that directing medical resources towards people who do not want to live is morally wrong, as these could be used to help save or prolong the lives of people who do not want to die.
[00:15:24] On the other side of the divide, the greatest criticisms of euthanasia typically come from those approaching the subject from a religious perspective, with most major world religions opposing euthanasia in all forms, arguing that all life is sacred and it should not be a person’s right to take away what has been given to them by God.
[00:15:47] And even disregarding religion for a moment, other critics point to the potential for abuse, that euthanasia becomes a sort of more socially acceptable form of suicide, and encourages people to end their lives when they might otherwise not have.
[00:16:07] Similarly, there are arguments that legalising and normalising euthanasia, especially among people who are not physically sick, will place society on a slippery slope.
[00:16:19] Remember, the Dutch law states that euthanasia is legal “where a patient is experiencing unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement and the attending physician fulfils the statutory due care criteria.”
[00:16:34] “Unbearable suffering” is deliberately unspecific, so if this kind of wording becomes the norm for euthanasia legislation worldwide, this sets a dangerous precedent, so the critics say. Unbearable suffering could be because of some crippling disease, but could it also be because of a bad break-up? Fear about climate change? Getting badly into debt?
[00:17:01] To the critics of this legislation, “unbearable suffering” feels unbearable and like it has no prospect of improvement, but this isn’t always the case. Normalising euthanasia is going to result in a load of people ending their lives who might otherwise have gone on to happy and healthy futures.
[00:17:23] But, to these critics, The Netherlands provides a useful blueprint on what happens when you legalise euthanasia, or at least, the country has a now 20-year track record of what happens when you allow people to choose to end their lives.
[00:17:40] So, what does happen?
[00:17:43] Today, euthanasia accounts for between 4 and 5% of deaths in The Netherlands.
[00:17:50] Are these people who would have died shortly after anyway, like the mother-in-law of Andries Postma or the 93-year-old Prime Minister and his wife? Or are they people like Zoraya ter Beek?
[00:18:03] In other words, are people choosing to die who would otherwise have lived?
[00:18:09] The statistics show that since euthanasia was legalised, the death rate in the Netherlands didn’t increase, it actually decreased slightly.
[00:18:18] Now, this is not to suggest that this had anything to do with euthanasia, but to those who warned that it might set a dangerous precedent and lead to many more people deciding to end their lives because euthanasia was legal, this simply hasn’t happened in the Netherlands.
[00:18:37] In the case of The Netherlands, legalising euthanasia was controversial when it was first proposed, but it has proved popular with its citizens, and there are calls to go even further.
[00:18:49] One recent poll suggested that 80% of Dutch people would support a bill legalising euthanasia if someone aged over 75 believed that their life was “complete”.
[00:19:02] This would clearly be a big step, as it wouldn’t require any form of unbearable suffering.
[00:19:10] To its supporters, it is the logical next step towards a more compassionate society.
[00:19:16] But to its critics, this is one step too far, a sign of a society that has lost its direction.
[00:19:25] In many other progressive policies, where the Dutch have gone, other countries have followed.
[00:19:32] In 2001, a year before euthanasia was legalised, The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, and since then 35 different countries have followed suit.
[00:19:46] But as far as euthanasia is concerned, despite the Netherlands’ 20-year history of legalisation, fewer than a dozen countries worldwide have legalised it.
[00:19:57] Whatever your thoughts on the rights and wrongs of euthanasia, the Dutch example gives us a window into a society in which people have the right to choose when to end their lives.
[00:20:08] Whether that’s a utopia or a dystopia, well, that is for you to decide.
[00:20:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Euthanasia In The Netherlands, and on euthanasia more generally.
[00:20:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new about this subject that I imagine is also a talking point in your country.
[00:20:31] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:20:34] Is euthanasia legal in your country? If so, when was it legalised, and what do people think about it?
[00:20:41] And where do you stand on the issue?
[00:20:44] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:20:55] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:00] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
