This is a classic example of the "slippery slope" theory in action. This story appeared on Yahoo News in late November, 2004:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors’ association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people “with no free will,” including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.

The Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.

Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.

The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital’s guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities. The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child’s medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it’s best.

Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.

The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.

This is quite sad and disturbing, frankly. Hitler was doing this and the world thought it was wrong. And now we are at this point:

Sympathectomy of the Soul:
Dutch Euthanasia and “Suffering Through Living”
From the Evangelical Outpost

After a three-year investigation, the Royal Dutch Medical Association has concluded that Dutch doctors ought to be able to kill patients who are not ill but who are judged to be "suffering through living." The report, which contradicts a Dutch Supreme Court ruling that euthanasia should be allowed only if a patient has a "classifiable physical or mental condition", argues that no reason can be given to exclude situations of such suffering from a doctor’s area of competence.

Jos Dijkhuis, the emeritus professor of clinical psychology who led the inquiry, said that it was "evident to us that Dutch doctors would not consider euthanasia from a patient who is simply ‘tired of, or through with, life,’" (terms used in the original court case). Instead his committee chose the term "suffering through living," where a patient may present a variety of physical and mental complaints.

He said there was "enormous protest" from doctors to the Supreme Court’s ruling. "In more than half of cases we considered, doctors were not confronted with a classifiable disease. In practice the medical domain of doctors is far broader … We see a doctor’s task is to reduce suffering, therefore we can’t exclude these cases in advance. We must now look further to see if we can draw a line and if so where."

The Dutch have conflated reducing suffering with eliminating suffering, pushing them into what the modern Hippocratic Oath calls the trap of “therapeutic nihilism.” While mental and psychological pain can be just as traumatic as physical pain, it may not necessarily be a permanent condition. When doctors choose the short-term elimination of pain rather than long-term maximizing of care, they kill more than their patients.

After a localized trauma or peripheral nerve injury, a person may feel a syndrome of pain and tenderness that can only be relieved by a sympathectomy, the excision of a sympathetic nerve. In a similar way when we see others suffering from psychological pain and trauma we may be tempted to resort to the “excision” provided by euthanasia. But in doing so we are cutting more than the cords of life. By severing the sympathetic nerves that tie us to our fellow human beings, euthanasia performs a sympathectomy on our souls.

Yes, indeed.