Euthanasia gone wrong as cancer patient required multiple injections to die

A recent Medscape article featured the story of a 48-year-old cancer patient who underwent a botched euthanasia procedure in the Netherlands, traumatizing those present. The case disputes the notion that euthanasia is a "peaceful" way to die.

Key Takeaways:

• A doctor in the Netherlands attempted to euthanize a cancer patient, but it took hours and multiple injections for her to die.

• Her family was traumatized by the experience.

• While euthanasia is described as a way for people to experience a peaceful death, that is far from the truth.

The Details:

The disturbing case, in which euthanasia went horribly wrong, involved a 48-year-old woman who was suffering from cancer and ostensibly chose to be euthanized out of fear of a painful death. Her friends and family gathered on the day of her planned death, and the sounds of calm piano music played in the background while everyone drank champagne. Arjen Göbel, a general medicine practitioner in Amstelveen, Netherlands, began the process of euthanizing the woman.

First, he injected the drug that was meant to place her into a coma. But it didn't work; after some time, she looked at him and said, “Gebeurt er nog wat of hoe zit dat?” — “Is something else happening or what?”

READ: GET THE FACTS: Euthanasia, assisted suicide, and palliative care are not the same

Göbel went to get a spare kit from his car and repeated the injection. But the woman remained awake and talking. An ambulance service had to come while he went to get more euthanasia kits from nearby pharmacies; Paramedics helped Göbel inject the lethal drugs into a vein in the woman's groin, but it had no effect. They then injected a fourth dose into an artery in her neck, and a half an hour later — four hours after the first injection — she died.

“It was the worst thing in my life,” Göbel said, with Medscape describing it as a "prolonged and traumatic ordeal" for everyone present.

Why It Matters:

Euthanasia is heavily promoted as the peaceful way to die, particularly if the person in question is suffering from a terminal illness, like cancer. Yet as Göbel found, the reality can be far more disturbing. Even in Medscape, however, it is portrayed as a near-certainty that those who are euthanized don't experience any pain or suffering.

“Propofol obliterates cortical consciousness to induce a deep coma,” Federico Piffer, MD, a consultant in respiratory medicine at the Pulmonology Unit, Hospital of Arco, Trento, Italy, said. “Even if the body experiences physiological trauma such as pulmonary edema, the patient is too deeply anesthetized to perceive any sensation of drowning or air hunger. They effectively die under the same total lack of sensation expected in major surgery.”

The same drugs used in euthanasia are those often used in lethal injection executions, and can be far more grisly than many realize. The drugs cause pulmonary edema, in which the lungs fill with fluid and victims drown in their own secretions. Yet in both euthanasia and lethal injection, the person is given a paralytic first, making it impossible to know what pain or suffering the patient is or isn't experiencing.

A study in the medical journal, "Anaesthesia," found that long, painful deaths from assisted suicide and euthanasia are common, with a third of patients taking 30 hours to die. Four percent took seven days to die. Experiments with assisted suicide and euthanasia have also been excruciating, with one cocktail said to be “burning patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.”

“The death penalty is not the same as assisted dying, of course. Executions are meant to be punishment; euthanasia is about relief from suffering,” Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory School of Medicine, said in a previous op-ed. “Yet for both euthanasia and executions, paralytic drugs are used. These drugs, given in high enough doses, mean that a patient cannot move a muscle, cannot express any outward or visible sign of pain. But that doesn’t mean that he or she is free from suffering.”

The Bottom Line:

Euthanasia is not a guarantee that someone will die peacefully, as this horrific story from the Netherlands proves.