The great euthanasia debate

How attitudes to mercy killings differ around EuropeTWO European countries, Britain and Belgium, have had cause in recent weeks to ponder the same ethical question: what happens when doctors decide a patient has no chance of a bearable life? In Britain headlines reported the grief of parents whose wishes were overruled by the courts, allowing doctors to turn off the ventilators keeping their son alive. Shortly afterwards a new study reported that active euthanasiain which not only is medical care withdrawn, but drugs are used to shorten lifeis opposed by two-thirds of British doctors.A similar debate has broken out in Belgium, another European country that has moved in a broadly secular, permissive direction over the past few decades. But this one was very different. Buried on inside pages, small newspaper stories reported a survey of paediatric intensive-care nurses. It emerged that they had witnessed two dozen infants and children being given lethal drugs to speed their deaths. That amounts to involuntary euthanasia, which is illegal (though Belgium, like the Netherlands, has legalised euthanasia for consenting adults). Asked if the law should be changed to allow the ending of minors lives, 89% of nurses in the Belgian study said yes.