Severe doubts have arisen in the Netherlands about the applicability of an advance directive in the case of patients with advanced dementia requesting euthanasia. This applicability is firmly based on a widely accepted reading of the relevant subsection of the Dutch euthanasia law.
I will question this reading and propose and defend an alternative reading. Arguments are supplied by the actual text of the subsection, by the moral doubts about ending the life of a patient who is hardly aware of what is happening, and by details from the first euthanasia case to go to court
in the Netherlands, with the Supreme Court ruling of April 2020. As to euthanasia, alternatives are presented for the patient with a strong conviction and determination 'never to reach that state', the state of advanced dementia.
Avoid Advanced Dementia with an Advance Directive for Stopping Eating and Drinking
