Let me put it another way: 'Can I be my brother's killer?' For thousands of years the answer has been 'no'; but in legal terms, in the UK, the answer 'yes' is being seriously proposed: 'Yes, you may kill your brother in certain defined circumstances'.
When euthanasia was considered by a House of Lords Select Committee in 1993-4, it said this:
... society's …show more content…
There are approximately 140,000 natural deaths in the Netherlands each year. Almost 10.000 requests for euthanasia are made annually; about 3,500 actually receive euthanasia and approximately 300 are assisted suicides. Somewhere between 1 in 32 and 1 in 38 of all deaths in the Netherlands are now via euthanasia/assisted suicide. In addition, it is estimated that there are about 1,000 deaths per annum where doctors end a patient's life without an explicit request; for example, those who are in a coma.
I need to point out that the medical system in the Netherlands is very different from ours - and that palliative care provision is a relatively new phenomenon. The figures from Holland, worry me greatly - I need to add that in the Netherlands you do not have to be terminally ill to request help to die:
We do not exclude … exceptional situations in which, for instance, somebody who is fifty-five and has a very severe but incurable mental illness which relates to a situation of hopeless and unbearable suffering, and asks for assisted