Official annual report on the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide in The Netherlands in 2002.
This is the annual report for 2002 of the five regional euthanasia review committees in The Netherlands on the working of that country’s 2002 ‘Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act’. The report provides details of the number of reported cases of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide; the nature of the cases; the committees’ findings; and the considerations on which these were based.
This is the first report of the review committees following the entry into force of the Act. While the review committees pre-dated the Act (they had been in existence since 1998), their function changed with the passage of the Act. Whereas previously they had examined reported cases of euthanasia or assisted suicide and given advice to the Public Prosecution Service and the Health Care Inspectorate as to the need for further action, from 2002 they undertook the role of deciding which cases complied or did not comply with the law and of passing the latter (but not the former) to the Prosecution Service and the Inspectorate.
LDW-Research-NL-2002-Report