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Chilling Protocol Ending youn g li fe -- now, and even here.By
Colleen Carroll CampbellPosted: Monday, March 13, 2006
ARTICLENational Review OnlinePublication Date: March 13,
2006
When little Chanou was born in 2000 with a rare and painful
illness that leads to abnormal bonedevelopment, doctors gave the
Dutch infant less than three years to live. As it turns out, she
only had sevenmonths.
That's when her parents and physicians, discouraged by her grim
prognosis, joined forces to do somethingthat has become
increasingly accepted in the Netherlands: They euthanized her.
"It is in some ways beautiful," Dutch pediatrician Eduard
Verhagen told the London Times, when describing
the dying moments of children like Chanou. "But it is also
extremely emotional and very difficult."
Not as difficult as it should be. In the Netherlands, euthanasia
of teenagers and adults is legal and babyeuthanasia -- already
practiced among Dutch doctors -- will soon be sanctioned by the
government.According to the Times, a committee established at the
urging of the Dutch Royal Medical Association will
begin regulating baby euthanasia in a few weeks. Its standard
for deciding who lives and dies will beVerhagen's own invention,
the Groningen Protocol.
The Groningen Protocol is chilling, not only because of its
audacity in attempting to judge the worth ofhuman lives but because
of its subjectivity in making those judgments. The protocol says
that a newborn canbe euthanized if his diagnosis and prognosis are
"certain," his suffering is "hopeless and unbearable," andhis
quality of life is "very poor," according to the child's parents
and "at least one independent doctor."
That standard assumes that physicians are infallible, our
current medical knowledge is complete, and humanbeings are
omniscient. How else could one assess with certainty another's
prognosis, experience ofsuffering, and quality of life? We can know
a child suffers; we can know a disease has no known cure. Butwe
cannot pronounce with certainty that another person has no hope or
that his suffering has rendered hislife worthless. Verhagen himself
suggested as much when he told the Times, "No doctor likes to do
this.
You will always ask yourself, 'Is there something I have not
thought of?' That is why it needs to be doneunder a spotlight: you
can never, ever be wrong."
But human beings will be wrong. Discouraged doctors, distraught
parents, and distant bureaucrats will makemistakes. And even when
their deadly decisions conform perfectly to the protocol, they will
commit graveevil by destroying innocent human life in a futile
quest to destroy suffering itself.
Americans may be tempted to think that such things could never
happen here. But support for infant andchild euthanasia has a long
history in the United States, stretching from the founding days of
the EuthanasiaSociety of America in 1938 to the recent
pronouncements of Peter Singer, a prominent Princeton ethicistwho
favors a parent's right to kill disabled newborns.
The threat of euthanasia is already a reality for some American
children. Haleigh Poutre, the 12-year-oldMassachusetts girl
severely beaten by her stepfather last fall, had spent only eight
days in the hospitalwhen her state custodians began fighting for
the right to remove her ventilator and feeding tube. Doctors
had diagnosed her condition as a persistent vegetative state,
but Haleigh recovered before they couldeuthanize her.
Haleigh's case reminds us that child euthanasia can happen in
any nation that has lost respect for theintrinsic value of life and
the inviolable dignity of the person. The chilling reality is that
although our depraved
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indifference to the sanctity of human life may not be as
advanced as Holland's, we are moving in thatdirection.
--Colleen Carroll Campbell, an NRO contributor, is a fellow at
the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a
former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, and author
ofThe New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are
Embracing Christian Orthodoxy.
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