Does anyone know where I can find a link to the Remmelink Report? This is the one that claimed that there were over 1000 cases a year of INvoluntary euthanasia in Holland.
Euthanasia without consent is called murder, so I guess 1000 cases in one year is not too bad Seriously, though, here is my take on your question.
Doing a quick Google got me to the conclusion that the report dates from 1991 and is in Dutch. At the time Internet was not a hot thing over here, so I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to find the actual report on-line. However, there are lots of people refering to it (try as an alternative Remmelink & Euthanasie, the Dutch spelling of euthanasia). They researched a lot of allegedly euthanasia cases: 28.300 passive euthanasia, and 3250 active. 1000 of the latter were not according to regulations, i.e. without proper consent. It does not say that these cases were per year.
I’ve never really cared much for the euthanasia debat so I cannot offer more than my Dutch laymans point of view.
On one of the sites (Biopolitiek | Het online bio-platform voor jong en oud), which appears to be quite critical, they still are sufficient evenhanded to mention some of the statistics on that 1000 cases of active euthanasia without consent of the patient. Apparently in only 14% of these cases the patient was fully conscious, in 11% partly (I’m not sure whether those are cumulative). Hence at least 750 of these cases concerned unconscious (probably comatose) patients. I’m really not sure what happened in the remainder of the cases.
With respect to the fear of people being murdered left, right and center around here (if that was an unspoken question in the OP), this is not a general feeling in The Netherlands. Every non-natural death has to be investigated by the police, and a doctor who claims to ‘do’ euthanasia may face murder charges. In a recent case (if I remember correctly) of a severely depressed patient the doctor was in the end convicted, albeit with a small fine. (I am not saying that abuse doesn’t happen or is totally excluded, I do not have the information to make good such a claim. I’m only conveying the general perception over here).