DISABILITIES

By Daniel J. Vance

Stephen Drake of Chicago has a bone to pick. And I'm inclined to agree with him.

He is a spokesperson for Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group aggressively trying to check the worldwide spread of euthanasia and assisted suicide. The group is funded by private donations.

Lately, Drake has been concerned about a growing movement in the Netherlands to accept a currently illegal form of euthanasia and a news service that has been spreading misinformation about this euthanasia.

“Active” euthanasia can be defined as a physician purposely “accelerating” death by administering life-ending drugs. Though active euthanasia is illegal in the Netherlands for children under 12, some doctors do it anyway. Recently, a group of Dutch doctors has called for making it legal.

Said 49-year-old Drake in a telephone interview, “For instance, we now know that Dutch doctors from 1997-2004 put to death through active euthanasia at least 22 children born with spina bifida. It was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

He said that a news service this year referencing the Journal report twice incorrectly referred to children with spina bifida as “terminally ill newborns.” Drake believes this was a deliberate attempt to redefine the deaths as humane and necessary when they weren't. He has challenged the news service, but it won't recant.

To set the record straight, spina bifida is a neural tube birth defect affecting 70,000 Americans. According to the Spina Bifida Association of America Web site, spina bifida isn't a terminal illness, but rather, “most people born with spina bifida can expect to live a normal life.”

A great number of people with disabilities, and Drake, fear the spread of active euthanasia in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The very old and young with severe disabilities are most vulnerable because they can't fight back.

Drake has personal reasons for fighting euthanasia. “I have hydrocephalus because of a brain injury at birth,” he said. “I was born breech and the doctor used forceps. He told my parents that I probably would not live through the night and it would be better if I just died. Fortunately, my parents didn't take his advice.”

Again, I'm inclined to agree with Drake. My 10-year-old daughter was born with spina bifida and this morning she enjoyed playing the piano. If born to Dutch parents, perhaps she wouldn't have.

For more, see www.danieljvance.com and www.notdeadyet.org