Original article (in Serbian) was published on 10/11/2022
The 47th educational symposium of the Clinic for Psychiatry of the Clinical Center of Serbia was held in Belgrade at the end of October, and one of the participants was the president of the I Live for Serbia movement, Dr. Jovana Stojkovic, a specialist in psychiatry known for spreading anti-vaccination and anti-scientific views. Her reaction to the lecture on euthanasia held by Professor Violeta Besirevic from the Union University Law Faculty attracted a lot of attention on Twitter, and in addition to negative comments about the lecturer, Jovana Stojkovic also conveyed another misinformation on that occasion.
In her tweet, Stojkovic states, among other things, that it is a “worrying fact” that Professor Besirevic said that “in the Netherlands, children over the age of 12 can request euthanasia without parental consent”. However, Dr. Besirevic confirmed to FN Tragac that she did not make this incorrect claim.
“At that gathering, I said what is written in the Dutch law, i.e. that children older than 12 can request euthanasia, but that the consent of their parents or guardians is mandatory until they turn 16”, Dr. Besirevic explains.
Euthanasia in the Netherlands
And indeed, on the website of the Government of the Netherlands, you can find the information that Besirevic is talking about, while the “worrying fact” attributed to her by Dr. Jovana Stojkovic is nowhere to be found. “Minors can request euthanasia themselves from the age of 12, although the consent of parents or guardians is mandatory until age 16. In principle, 16-year-olds do not need parental consent, but parents must be involved in the decision-making process”, as stated on the Dutch government’s website.
In this country, two types of termination of life due to the patient’s unbearable suffering are allowed. Euthanasia, i.e. the case in which the doctor gives the patient an appropriate dose of a lethal substance, and assisted suicide when the doctor allows the patient to give himself a lethal dose of the appropriate substance.
According to the website of the Government of the Netherlands, “Each case of euthanasia and assisted suicide must be reported to one of the five Regional Euthanasia Review Boards (RTE). The committee will assess whether the doctor paid attention to the patient. If the doctor does not do this, he can be prosecuted. Penalties vary, but they can be up to 12 years in prison for euthanasia and up to three years for assisted suicide”.
14 applications from 2002 to 2018
All decisions on euthanasia and assisted suicide can be found on the Regional Committees for the Review of Euthanasia website, and this institution also provides insight into the statistics on these cases. In the section on the website dedicated to minors, it is stated that cases of euthanasia of minors aged 12 to 18 are rare.
“In the period from 2002 to 2018, the Regional Euthanasia Audit Committees received 14 such reports. In each of these cases, the patient’s family understood and respected the request for euthanasia”, states the RTE website.
According to the latest available report from 2019, that year, “RTE did not review any application for euthanasia involving a minor between the ages of 12 and 17”.
FakeNews Tragac made an overview of the achievements of Jovana Stojkovic as part of the analysis of the scientific production of the “corona influencer”. You can see the entire analysis here.