Better Off Dead

For those who hold out the Netherlands as a textbook case of a ‘slippery slope’, they see a law originally designed to help the terminally ill – but that has now ‘slipped’ to include those who aren’t. But the Dutch law wasn’t written to deal only with certain diseases; guided by doctors themselves, it was deliberately created for people whose suffering is ‘unbearable and untreatable’. Barbara Heetman: 'My mother had to say totally from her own brain, heart, whatever, ‘I want this."' — Photo: Emily Sexton This might include, for example, people with long-term, corrosive illnesses such as multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease. In some circumstances, it may even include people with Alzheimer’s. But if the basis of your law is that only a mentally competent adult can request euthanasia, how do you deal with cases where that competence is unclear? Barbara Heetman’s mother, Jeanne, applied to be euthanised before losing herself in the fog of Alzheimer’s. Her request was considered by the End of Life Clini