e of non-voluntary euthanasia. This phenomenon can be seen, for example, in the behaviour of The Royal Dutch Medical Association over the past fifteen years. Having worked for the acceptance of what purported to be the 'strictly controlled' practice of voluntary euthanasia only, they are now working for the acceptance of the practice of non-voluntary euthanasia.* secondly, because the criteria for delimiting the practice of euthanasia to killing at the request of the patient prove to be irremediably imprecise. The Dutch experience has demonstrated the truth of what critics said about any legal accommodation of voluntary euthanasia (whether by statute law or by judicial decision), namely, that it would lead to the extensive practice of non-voluntary euthanasia. The available data show, on a conservative estimate, that about 1 in 12 deaths in Holland in 1990 were euthanasia deaths (10,558 cases) and more than half of these were without explicit request.5. Euthanasia undermines the dispositions we require in doctors and is therefore destructive of the practice of medicineThe practice of medicine cannot flourish unless doctors are so disposed that they inspire trust in patients many of whom are extremely vulnerable. Doctors will not inspire trust unless patients are confident that doctors* are for no reasons disposed to kill them;* have no inclination to ask whether a patient is worth caring for or treating, rather than asking what care or treatment might benefit the patient.But the practice of euthanasia systematically undermines both of the required dispositions. For it disposes doctors to kill certain of their patients, and it inculcates a disposition to think of some patients as not having worthwhile lives. Since there are no non-arbitrary criteria for determining who has and who has not a worthwhile life, the temptation to categorise the difficult and the unappealing as not having worthwhile lives is very strong for the person who has ...
