Christian Medical Comment: The Lancet report showing that euthanasia rates have not increased in the Netherlands since legalisation in 2002 will no doubt be seized upon by enthusiasts for decriminalisation in the UK and elsewhere but the figures are not at all what they seem at first sight and the press release sent out by the journal is selective and misleading in its reporting of the facts.
If you read the press release sent by the Lancet (reproduced by Medical Xpress) it all seems cut and dried. . . . But if you read the abstract along with the full article and accompanying comment you get a very different picture altogether.
The key fact which should alert people to something odd going on is the reference to ‘continuous deep sedation’ in the Netherlands which appears in the article’s abstract but tellingly (and perhaps even disingenuously) not in the Lancet press release.
The abstract states, ‘Continuous deep sedation until death occurred more frequently in 2010 (12.3% [11.6—13.1; 789 of 6861]) than in 2005 (8.2% [7.8—8.6; 521 of 9965]).’ But what was the rate of ‘continuous deep sedation until death’ in 2001 and previously?
On examining the article we learn from table 1 that it was not measured in 1990 and 1995 and was 5.6% in 2001. In other words there has been a steady increase in this category of cases which in 2010 accounted for 16,700 deaths. Over the same period the number of deaths after ‘intensified alleviation of symptoms’ has also increased from 20.1% to 36.4% and now accounts for over 49,500 deaths annually.
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