Properly reviewed? Spread the guilt you mean. If a committee says it was OK then the murderer can find solace in groupthink. Sheesh. The reason these things are done in the dark is because those doing the killing know, in their bones, that it is wrong.
I have long since lost the source, but a while back I came upon a piece wherein the author acknowledged reservations about the progress of Dutch practice, but brushed them away, opining confidently that it was all a matter of getting the law written just right. I am profoundly skeptical. Surely doctors have long helped their agonized patients out of this world, "don't ask, don't tell", or tacitly, with his parents, allowed a suffering infant to die in peace, no matter the technology available to keep him alive. But whatever sympathy we have in these instances I see only evil consequences in the attempt to find relief for a necessary guilt, arising from what must remain morally ambiguous actions. (Leaving aside for the moment that there is little ambiguity in some of the acts Tim mentions.) There's something puling, something "make it all better, make it stop stinging" in the drive of the regulators. Why? It should never stop stinging.
The impulse is seen in the patients as well as the doctors. It is easy to understand the cry for assistance of the sufferer who lacks the capacity to bring about his own end. (For them, I have found the "oh no my dear, no suicide may be allowed, you may not choose your own end" partisans to creepily mirror the control-freak strain in the oh so rational and compassionate enthusiasts of euthanasia.) But what is disturbing is to see, while still among aspiring suicides able of body and competent to choose for themselves, is the drive to involve others in a morally dubious act - to "spread the guilt", get "permission" and assistance from an authority figure, remove oneself for responsibility for the act. Creepier yet when the committees and triplicate forms have moved on from the dilemmas of suicide.
Tacit euthanasia has always been around, as you note. What's different about the Dutch method is that it systematically transfers the responsibility from the suffering person's family and personal physician, who of all living people are most likely to share the patient's best interests, to unrelated committees and bureaucrats who not only can't possibly share the family's sense of responsibility but are also more likely to have a perverse incentive to get rid of someone who for them is mainly a burden.
Posted by: Jonathan on January 12, 2005 07:27 AM