Please! Don’t tell me that euthanasia doesn’t lead straight off a vertical moral cliff. A recent survey of Netherlander MD general practitioners found that very high percentages would kill cancer patients, and one-third would be willing to euthanize the mentally ill. From the PsychCentral story:

For mental illness, only 34 percent would consider helping the patient die, and 40 percent would help someone with early-stage dementia to die. The rate was slightly lower for late-stage dementia, at 33 percent.

Only? Good grief. Once killing is accepted as a proper answer to human suffering, there are no brakes.

By the way, 42 mentally ill patients were euthanized in the Netherlands in the most recent year for which statistics are available, as psychiatrists up their participation as a source of “liberation” for the patient and the doctors. Also, nearly 100 early-stage dementia patients. And those are the ones reported. How many were killed surreptitiously cannot be known.

Image by Gouwenaar (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.