TV REVIEWS : ‘Choosing’ Contrasts Dutch, American Euthanasia Views

“We are the most death-denying country in the world.” The comment by Ann Arsenault, an audience member at the studio-discussion portion of “Choosing Death,” reflects on a dichotomy that underlies everything in this two-hour examination of euthanasia. (A co-production of “The Health Quarterly” and “Frontline,” the program airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28, at 8 on KPBS-TV Channel 15 and KVCR-TV Channel 24.)

The debate emerges not so much on ethical grounds--although the discussion of values does appear from time to time--as on cultural ones. This argument, played out in the studio portion hosted by Roger Mudd, is spurred on by the “Frontline”-produced film segments of euthanasia practice in the Netherlands, the only country in which euthanasia is officially condoned.

The contrast couldn’t be starker. On one side are the Dutch, with centuries-long traditions of liberal egalitarianism combined with prosperity, of an openness toward sex, the body--and now, death. We see doctors assisting ailing elderly patients in mutually arranged killings, as well as AIDS and anorexia patients, even babies doomed to a terrible quality of life. The country is, in fact, teeming with Jack Kevorkians, and while some have been brought up on murder charges (especially in the highly ambiguous pediatric cases), they operate well within accepted Dutch practice.

They also appear to have wonderful relationships with their patients, who also never complain about their medical bills. This brings up the other side--the Americans. Mudd’s audience, as well as his panel of medical experts, remark again and again on how different the Dutch are from us. What a difference a house call makes. What a difference a Dutch-style national health care system makes.

Significantly, it is the doctors of color on the panel--Dr. Carlos F. Gomez and Dr. September Williams--who stress the American problem of the potential for class and race bias in euthanasia procedures. Why, as more than one participant here notes, should people who have no control over the rest of their lives suddenly be allowed to have control over their death?

While panelist and biomedical ethicist Dan W. Block articulates a possible euthanasia law for the United States, it is also clear that without the access to health care and good doctor-patient relations so common in the Netherlands, euthanasia in America will remain in Kevorkian’s shadow.