2025-02-16
24 分钟In the Netherlands, doctors and dementia patients must negotiate a fine line: Assisted death for those without capacity is legal, but doctors won’t do it.
Hi, my name is Stephanie Nolan, and I'm a global health reporter for the New York Times.
For the last year and a half,
I've been working on a series that's taken me
around the world to talk to people about medical assistance in dying.
And the first story in that series is from the Netherlands.
The Netherlands has had medical assistance in dying,
or what they call euthanasia, longer than almost anywhere in the world.
So it seemed like a place where there would be a lot to learn.
And as I started talking to people there,
I realized a really fascinating thing about how their system works,
or, like,
really how their system has evolved to find a kind of compromise that's comfortable
for everyone concerned.
And that compromise has to do with medical assistance in dying for people with dementia.
Populations are getting older.
All around the world,
more people are having the experience of caring for parents who might need to go into nursing homes.
And in the Netherlands,
a lot of people have advance request documents where they're asking doctors to provide them
with euthanasia