The evolution of euthanasia This essay will investigate the evolution of the practice of euthanasia in the only country that has firmly promoted it for some years. The surprising result of my studies for this essay is the revelation that the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands has become so liberalized that it is no longer recognizable as the same program originally legislated. Euthanasia in the Netherlands has gone from requiring terminal illness to no physical illness in general, from physical suffering to just depression, from conscious to unconscious patients, from those who can consent to those who cannot, and from being a measure of last resort to an early intervention measure. Although respect for patient autonomy is the main ethical argument in favor of euthanasia, power has passed almost exclusively into the hands of doctors. Patient autonomy has been subverted by the unprecedented rights granted by courts to doctors to decide the fate of patients. The public era of euthanasia in the Netherlands began in 1973, [1] when two significant events occurred. A government commission has reported that the ban on active euthanasia should remain, and a doctor, after admitting to killing his sick mother who wanted to die, was found guilty and given a suspended sentence. Evidence was provided that he had only done what was already commonly, if unofficially, done by many doctors. The court announced several conditions that it believed would justify actively killing a patient. In 1981 and 1983, two courts reached similar conclusions. A state commission on euthanasia decided in 1982, [2] that "a doctor who interrupts the treatment of a patient's life at the express and serious desire of the latter...... half of the document ......t of the Remmelink Report and the van der Maas study on euthanasia, in Euthanasia, clinical practice and law. Ed Gormally L. The Linacre Center 1994. p 219-240.12. Pijnenborg L, van der Maas PJ, van Delden JJM, Looman CWN. Acts that end life without explicit request of the patient. Lancetta 1993: 1196-1199.14 Remmelink; Two years later 24-27.15. New rules on euthanasia. Law Issued 1993. Id. p 170.17. Willems DL et al. Evaluation of the physician-assisted death notification procedure in the Netherlands. New Eng J Med. 1996; Marco Ludlow. Canberra Times. November 17 1996.