 "You're not going to dehydrate mom, are you?": Euthanasia, versterving, and good death in the NetherlandsRobert Pool Social Science & Medicine, 2004, vol. 58, issue 5, 955-966 Abstract: In 1996, a debate erupted in the Netherlands about versterven: dying as a result of abstaining from eating and drinking. This discussion initially appeared to be one of the many side-shows to the wider Dutch euthanasia debate, but it continued to dominate the debate for the next few years, with newspaper headlines reporting "involuntary dehydration" in nursing homes. Part of the reason for this was the term itself. Introduced to refer to terminal dehydration, the word versterven had peculiar connotations and this, together with the way in which it was used, caused much confusion and controversy. Was versterven related to euthanasia? Did it denote dying naturally and peacefully or a horrible death imposed on helpless phychogeriatric patients? Was it (could it be) voluntary? Was the patient in control? Was it good death? This paper examines the discussion about, and the media representations of, versterven, focusing on its ambiguity and its relationship to good death. Keywords: Good; death; Versterven; Euthanasia; Terminal; dehydration; The; Netherlands; Media; representations (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:58:y:2004:i:5:p:955-966 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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