Cempaka Belanda: 'Right to die' for elderly back at centre of Dutch debate

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

"The Timing of the Great Shift" – Mar 21, 2009 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.
They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."

"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

'Right to die' for elderly back at centre of Dutch debate

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 9 February 2010 - 9:38am, by NRC International

By Folkert Jensma for NRC International.

A citizens action group wants to legalise assisted suicide for all people over 70.

All Dutch people over 70 years of age who feel tired of life should have the right to professional help in ending it, a citizens' initiative in the Netherlands calling itself “Out of Free Will” demands. It will start collecting signatures on Tuesday in support of this proposed change in Dutch legislation, hoping to place the matter firmly on the parliamentarian agenda.A number of prominent Dutch citizens have come out in support of the initiative, including former ministers and artists, legal scholars and physicians .

The group hopes to decriminalise assisted suicide in the Netherlands. Under current Dutch law, euthanasia is only legal in cases of “hopeless and unbearable” suffering, which in practice means it is limited to people suffering from serious medical conditions in considerable pain. Only doctors are allowed to assist in euthanasia. Helping somebody who does not meet the qualifications stipulated in the current euthanasia law commit suicide is illegal. The Netherlands legalised euthanasia in 2001 as one of the few countries in the world to have done so.

A new medical trade

The newly founded citizens initiative does not only want to decriminalise these acts, it wants to found a new profession to assist those weary of life in taking it. The group has suggested this task be carried out by specially trained and certified nurses, psychologists or spiritual professionals who could verify the request for assisted suicide in a series of conversations with the elderly patient. Only after a second health care professional has confirmed the patient’s death wish would he be provided with lethal drugs. The sam caretaker would finally supervise the patient as he administrates these to himself.

The group paints the following scenario: The specialists should ensure that the patient is of sound mind and that his or her request is explicit, logical and consistent. The suicide assistants must make sure the death wish is more than a rash impulse, the product of depression or the symptom of another illness, and that the patient has considered the consequences of his actions for those that will survive him. Once the patient has taken his own life, the suicide assistant writes a report that can be reviewed by the municipal coroner. The case is then assessed by the regional euthanasia approval commission, which has already been instituted to oversee the application of the current Dutch euthanasia law.

“Out of Free Will” imagines health care professionals looking to assist in suicides will need to complete a special “Completed Life” training programme and join a professional association responsible for maintaining standards of professional, transparent and safe conduct. The group argues suicide assistance should only be provided to Dutch citizens. Currently, an estimated 400 elderly take their own lives every year, sometimes by violent means.

Enjoy old life – up to a point

In an interview in the office of Dick Swaab (65), a leading member of the group and the managing director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam, three of the initiative’s prominent supporters explained why they felt suicide assistance should be made legal. Former minister and self-described feminist Hédy d’Ancona (72) said arguing the right to choose one’s time of death was a natural extension of her lifelong battle for emancipation.

Legal scholar Eugène Sutorius (63) said he considered the right a cultural matter, and that he was looking for freedom to face death “in a stoic manner”, without fear of a legal system that qualified assisted suicide as a crime or the dread of ending up in a care facility resembling a prison.

For neurologist Swaab, death is a rather straightforward matter. “Throughout the animal kingdom, individuals are simply replaced, rather than patched up endlessly,” he explained. Aging constitutes nothing more than “cells wearing through use,” Swaab said. His argument: when you feel you have no more life left in you, you should be able to say so, and act on it.

All three expressed enthusiasm about ageing. Everything becomes easier to put into perspective as time passes, they said. Sutorius called it an “immense pleasure”. D’Ancona referred to it as “a great phase of life.” But they also expressed fear of what is still to come. D’Ancona said the knowledge she would be unable to end her life when she wanted to left her with a “nagging feeling”. She said it took some of the enjoyment out of what was otherwise a pleasurable phase of her life. Sutorius too feared a moment would soon come when he would come to experience the drawbacks of ageing. “I do not want to outlive myself,” he said.

Completed life – time to end it?

The citizens action group refers to that moment as the time “life is completed”. The lack of purpose that befalls elderly people when their family, friends and acquaintances have all passed away. When they feel left behind, unable to escape an empty existence. Dutch Legal scholar Huib Drion proposed providing the old with an “acceptable means to end their lives at a moment they see fit” as early as 1991. Based on opinion polls, the citizens initiative group believes broad popular support exists to make this option into law. The issues that would arise from such a move are surmountable, the group feels.

What about the risk of abuse for instance? The elderly may find themselves being pushed into taking their own lives by an unsupportive social circle. Wouldn’t legalising suicide assistance be taking things one step to far? Sutorius denied this, calling the group’s proposal “a step in the right direction”. Lifting the burden of suicide assistance from doctors’ shoulders would help these keepers of life steer clear of situations where they would be required to take it.

According to Sutorius, criminal law has little bearing on assisted suicide for people over 70. Responsible, transparent assisted suicide, carried out in a proper manner, is light years removed from the capital offences listed in the criminal code, he said. “No one stands to win or gain personally from it, and there is no disproportional violence harming other peoples’ interests involved.”

Still, criminal law knows a plethora of cases involving so called “angles of death”: nurses or doctors who took to (mercy) killings of their patients. According to Sutorius, “illegitimate coercion” can never be ruled out completely. The law can only do its best to fight it. Sutorius recalled that the introduction of legal euthanasia in the Netherlands was once seen as a corruption of medicine too. “It was thought to be the first step onto a slippery slope that would lead the medical profession to lose its integrity. But I have seen nothing of the kind happen.”

Only for 70 and over

The group wants to draw a line at age 70. Helping young people commit suicide “cannot be justified,” Sutorius said. When a younger person kills himself, it is always “a disaster”, he claimed. “An older person can understand more, has more perspective.

The group admitts the age of 70 was a somewhat arbitrary cut-off point. “Whether it should be 65 or 90 is a good question. We think that once someone has reached old age, he proved abilities at living. He can then chose to leave this life in a procedural, medicalised manner,” Sutorius said.

The three think the proposed profession of suicide assistant would be somewhat like “taking a walk with death”. A job advertisement would sound something like this: “Wanted: nurse or spiritual caretaker in possession of a Completed Life Certificate.” Who would respond to such an ad? “I would not hesitate to do so myself,” Sutorius said. "You would be guiding someone to death at his express request, in the most humane way possible,” D’Ancona added.

Still, since suicide itself is not illegal under current law, why would anyone want to burden someone else with the taking of his own life? Because, Swaab explained, “you need to know how much of what you need take”. Usually, the required drugs are not hard to come by, and under current law relatives are usually the ones procuring the lethal drugs, sometimes with some help from a physician who has been tricked into providing them under false pretences.

Also, a do-it-yourself suicide leaves ample room for error. “Current practice is in no one interest,” Sutorius said. “Also, people might act on a whim. Or because they are depressed or otherwise ill and unable to oversee their own situation.” Suicide assistance might therefore also help to prevent people from taking their own life, Swaab added.