Several people with autism and intellectual disabilities have been legally euthanized in the Netherlands in recent years because they said they could not lead normal lives.
“There’s no doubt in my mind these people were suffering,” Tuffrey-Wijne said. “But is society really OK with sending this message, that there’s no other way to help them and it’s just better to be dead?”
Among the eight patients cited by researchers were an autistic man in his 20s. His record said “the patient had felt unhappy since childhood," was regularly bullied and"longed for social contacts but was unable to connect with others.” The man, who was not named, chose euthanasia after deciding that “having to live on this way for years was an abomination.”
Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, said it was “abhorrent” that people with autism were being euthanized without being offered further support. “Some of them are almost excited at the prospect of death,” Sizoo said. “They think this will be the end of their problems and the end of their family’s problems.”
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