Dutch Prove that the Culture of Death is Like Heroin

Not content with thousands of euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths a year, the Dutch are about to have access to a suicide guide. From the story:

A scientific guide to DIY suicide is to go on sale in the Netherlands to help people end their lives quickly and painlessly...It contains detailed information on using drugs as well as committing suicide by starvation, including the quickest and least painful way to do it.

The author is a true villain in the modern story of euthanasia and assisted suicide, a psychiatrist who assisted the suicide of a grieving mother--leading to the Dutch Supreme Court's ruling that validated assisted suicide for the depressed:

Author and psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot said: "Doctors learn little about this subject during their training. This book is for people who want to make their own decisions about ending their own lives."

The Dutch have a high suicide rate already:

There are about 4,400 suicides a year [which I assume excludes the thousands of euthanasia deaths] in Holland, broadly the same as in England and Wales, even though it has barely a quarter of the population. Euthanasia is now legal there but with strict rules.

Strict rules!? Oh, my head hurts.

And the moral of the story? The culture of death is like heroin: Once you start to mainline, it is never enough.

The Dutch Suicide Problem

The Dutch apparently have a real problem with suicidal desires. According to this story, there are nearly 100,000 suicide attempts each year, with about 1,600 resulting deaths. From the story: "The official figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) indicate that 1,600 people actually commit suicide each year--a number that has remained stable for a long time. This figure puts the Netherlands at number fifty in the world for incidents of suicide, and somewhere in the middle when compared to the rest of Europe. But the Trimbos institute suspects that the actual figure is much higher, since many suicides in the Netherlands are registered as traffic accidents or industrial accidents."

Ah, but that isn't the only manner in which the Dutch suicide statistics are skewed. Euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths are also not counted in the suicide statistics. If they were, the number of suicides each year in the Netherlands would exceed 5,000--and even that figure would be low since it is widely acknowledged that the number of euthanasia/assisted suicide deaths each year is dramatically under-reported. Including Dutch euthanasia/assisted suicide statistics in the count--which would make it more accurate--would place the Dutch suicide rate among highest in the world.

HT: Alex Schadenberg