INTRODUCTION

There is only one country in which euthanasia is officially condoned and widely practised: the Netherlands. Although euthanasia is proscribed by the Dutch Penal Code, the Dutch Supreme Court held in 1984 that a doctor who kills a patient may in certain circumstances successfully invoke the defence of necessity, also contained in the Code, to justify the killing. In the same year, the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) issued its members with guidelines for euthanasia. Since that time the lives of thousands of Dutch patients have been intentionally shortened by their doctors.

A requirement central to both the legal and medical guidelines has been the free and explicit request of the patient. Defenders of the guidelines have claimed that they permit voluntary euthanasia but not euthanasia without request; that they are sufficiently strict and precise to prevent any slide down a ‘slippery slope’ to euthanasia without request, and that there has been no evidence of any such slide in the Netherlands.

The question addressed in this chapter can be simply put: Does the Dutch experience of euthanasia lend any support to the claims of supporters of voluntary euthanasia that acceptance of voluntary euthanasia does not lead to acceptance of non–voluntary euthanasia or does it, rather, tend to support the claims of opponents of voluntary euthanasia that voluntary euthanasia leads down a ‘slippery slope’ to euthanasia without request?