Nursing home doctor is charged in euthanasia case

FILE - In this April 3, 2018, file photo, police pack away seized marijuana after a press conference in Bangkok, Thailand. The National Legislative Assembly on Friday, Nov. 9, submitted amendments that would put marijuana and the plant kratom, popular locally as a stimulant and painkiller, into a legal category that would allow for their licensed possession and distribution under regulated conditions. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)
FILE - In this April 3, 2018, file photo, police pack away seized marijuana after a press conference in Bangkok, Thailand. The National Legislative Assembly on Friday, Nov. 9, submitted amendments that would put marijuana and the plant kratom, popular locally as a stimulant and painkiller, into a legal category that would allow for their licensed possession and distribution under regulated conditions. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Dutch officials said Friday that they will prosecute a nursing home doctor for euthanizing an elderly woman with dementia, the first time a doctor has been charged since the Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2002.

Dutch prosecutors said in a statement that the doctor "had not acted carefully" and "overstepped a line" when she performed euthanasia. Officials first began probing the case in September, when they found the doctor had drugged the patient's coffee and then had family members hold her down while delivering the fatal injection.

The doctor said she was fulfilling the patient's earlier euthanasia request and that since the patient was not competent, nothing the woman said during her euthanasia procedure was relevant.

But Dutch prosecutors argued that the patient's written euthanasia request was "unclear and contradictory."

"In her living will, the woman wrote that she wanted to be euthanized 'whenever I think the time is right.' But after being asked several times in the nursing home whether she wanted to die, she said, 'Not just now, it's not so bad yet,'" according to an earlier report by one of the Netherlands' euthanasia review committees.

"Even if the patient had said at that moment: 'I don't want to die,' the physician would have continued," the committee wrote, citing the doctor's own testimony.

Prosecutors said Friday that the doctor should have verified with the patient whether or not she still wanted to die and that "the fact that she had become demented does not alter this."

The Netherlands is one of five countries that allow doctors to kill patients at their request, and one of two, along with Belgium, that grant the procedure for people with mental illness. For those with late-stage dementia, euthanasia is still possible if the person made a written demand specifying the conditions under which they want to be killed and if other criteria are met, namely if the doctor agrees the patient is suffering unbearably with no prospect of improvement.

A Section on 11/10/2018

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