Suffering Elderly

Putting Heart & Soul in End-of-Life Care

In April 2002, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize assisted death—what we term "euthanasia" and also assisted suicide—under a very specific set of conditions: unbearable pain, incurable illness, and a request made in the patient's "full consciousness."¹ Later that year, Belgium followed suit.

In both countries, instances of assisted death have gone up markedly each year. In Belgium, 235 people were killed in 2003. In 2013, there were 1,807 cases, representing an almost eight-fold increase.² In the year 2016–2017, there were a startling 2,309 cases reported.³

The Belgian and Dutch laws are similar in that both allow...