Professor Theo Boer:

While the end-of-life clinic, which is now called Expertisecentrum Euthanasie, is not for profit, it is funded by the insurance companies. This means that for every euthanasia case, it receives €3,300 of which the performing physician receives €2,000. For some of these physicians it is kind of a profit thing. I have heard several of them say that they need this money for several reasons, even though most of them are retired. However, it is officially not for profit. The main criticism of this euthanasia expert centre is that they have only one kind of ice cream, that is vanilla. I am sorry for that comparison, but I mean that they only offer euthanasia. They do not offer any other help. They do not offer psychiatric or social help. They can only refer the patient back to where they came from. Perhaps that may even be the same with Dignitas in Switzerland, namely that they do not have the infrastructure to take the patients under the arm and say come on, let us try to find an alternative. That of course was the question to Mr. Luley and he may answer it later.

I will say something about the culture shift. What has happened that we in the Netherlands now have 10,000 cases of assisted dying with a tendency to go further up? Basically there are three values in life. One is that life has an intrinsic value. The second is quality of life, which means experiences of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The third is to be in charge of your own life, that is, autonomy or self-determination.

Of those three values, the inherent value of life - apart from autonomy and experiences of pleasure and avoidance of pain - has in large part lost its intrinsic value. That also marks my difference, probably, with Mr. Luley because the non-natural death, which I do not call "killing" or "murder", is still terminating the life in a non-natural way. It is my view that when life is not done with me I should not be done with life. Here comes a little theological note. St. Augustine says I can very well imagine that you want to die because of persecution or because of extreme pain, but death must come from elsewhere, such as from pneumonia or a deadly disease you do not fight. One may welcome death as it comes, but intentionally and artificially ending it is problematic, in my tradition at least, and in my feeling.