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Guidelines on Voluntary Euthanasia in the Netherlands:
gap-fill exercise.

Read the Euthanasia Guidelines in the Netherlands and then complete the exercise on this page:
Type the words or phrases that should go in the spaces.

Part 1

In the Netherlands there is an unusual situation.
Although euthanasia is illegal there, doctors are not     if they follow special euthanasia guidelines.

These guidelines were made as     of a famous trial in 1973. A doctor gave a fatal injection to her sick mother. The mother was in great pain and wanted to die.

Many people believed that the doctor had done the     thing. However, under the law, the court had no choice:
it had to find the doctor   . She was given a suspended sentence of one week in prison.

Part 2

The guidelines say that the person who is going to die:

must completely    what will happen;
must know about all other kinds of  ;
must freely repeat their    over a period of time;
must be    from something that will not stop or go away.

Part 3

In addition:

A second doctor, (not the doctor who will perform the euthanasia) must    that euthanasia is acceptable in that particular case.

After the patient has died, the doctor who    the euthanasia must complete a long questionnaire.

When the patient is dead, a coroner must    the body and check the facts of the case.

Finally, after all this has been done, the Ministry of Justice can decide to  , if it is not satisfied.

Vocabulary

PROSECUTE (v): officially charge with a crime.

FATAL (adj): leading to someone's death.

An INJECTION is a way of using a special needle to give somebody a drug.

A SENTENCE is the punishment decided by a court. If a judge SUSPENDS a sentence, the judge decides that the person does not actually have to receive the punishment.

TREATMENT (n): a way of trying to make a sick person better.

QUESTIONNAIRE (n): a list of written questions for the purpose of gathering information.

The MINISTRY OF JUSTICE: In many countries, the part of government that deals with enforcing the laws.

The content of this exercise was contributed by FRANKIE MEEHAN

The information comes from the article "A Careful Death" by Dinyar Godrej which appeared in the April 1997 issue of the New Internationalist.
Copyright The New Internationalist 1997, 1998

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Last Modified: 13 June 2000