'We can't manage all suffering', assisted dying critic says

The Oireachtas joint committee on assisted dying heard that the number of people availing of assisted dying in the Netherlands has quadrupled in 20 years, from just over 2,000 people in 2020 to almost 9,000 in 2022. Picture: PA

An expert in assisted dying says he fears that death is being increasingly viewed as a remedy against "all kinds of unbearable suffering".

Former supporter turned critic of the Netherlands’ right-to-die laws, Theo Boer, a professor of healthcare ethics at the Protestant Theological University in Groningen, told a Dáil committee on Tuesday that his country's euthanasia laws turned the whole landscape of dying, including their view of illness, suffering, ageing, and care-dependence upside down.

“Excuse me for using this language in a parliamentary setting but shit happens. Life can be very, very difficult, and we can’t manage all suffering,” he said.

He made his comments after telling the Oireachtas joint committee on assisted dying that the number of people availing of assisted dying in the Netherlands has quadrupled in 20 years, from just over 2,000 people in 2020 to almost 9,000 in 2022.

In some neighbourhoods, assisted deaths account for 15% to 20% of all deaths, he said.

He also said there has been an expansion of the pathologies, or the reasons, underlying a request to die in the Netherlands — from initially those who cited fears of spending their final days in pain and agony to patients today citing fears about years or decades of loneliness, alienation and care dependency.

“The legalisation of euthanasia has done much more than just providing some people the liberty to take a way out,” he said.

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“It turned the whole landscape of dying, including our view of illness, suffering, ageing, and care-dependence upside down.” 

Not all suffering and misery is manageable, he said, as he expressed fears that society is increasingly viewing death as a remedy against all kinds of unbearable suffering.

“And that’s what’s worrying me,” he said.

“I’m 63 now. I expect my life will, at some point, become miserable and I don’t want to live in a country where people say daddy, or grandfather, you have the option of ending your life."

But Silvan Luley, a board member of Dignitas, the Swiss not-for-profit group which provides physician-supported accompanied suicide, told the committee that assisted dying should be a legal human right and freedom in Ireland for those with the mental capacity to make the decision.

He also said assisted suicide should be decriminalised here irrespective of any recommendations the committee might make on potential policy or law changes around assisted dying here.

He spoke of the extremes some people have gone to to fulfil their right-to-die choice, including one patient who flew from Britain to Switzerland by air ambulance to avail of assisted suicide.

“That’s absurd. That must change,” he said.

“It cannot be that people need to travel abroad. It was the same as with abortion many years ago where people from Ireland travelled to England to have that choice. Things like this must stop.”