Review of cases

Dr den Hartogh mentions a case in the Netherlands where the Dutch review committee deemed ‘the doctor … not careful’.1 This case was published after we submitted our paper. The case was judged ‘not careful’ because no psychiatrist had been consulted to consider the competence of the patient, and to review whether the patient's situation was truly of a hopelessness nature. In this case, the doctor who performed the euthanasia and the consultant were general practitioners. This case does not undermine our argument. The review committee did not suggest that the patient was incompetent. In our paper, we are careful to consider only treatment-resistant competent patients.

Dr Cowley mentions the so-called Chabot case and the Brongersma case.2 In the Netherlands, the Brongersma case is not discussed under the label ‘depression’, but as a case of a patient who was ‘tired of life’.3 Eighty-six-year-old former politician Edward Brongersma did not suffer from a mental or other illness. It deserves a separate discussion and is outside the scope of our paper. The Chabot case was extraordinary because the patient had no wish to be cured from her depression because she felt depression to be an appropriate state to be in after the premature deaths of her two sons.4 This case also falls outside the scope of our paper.

Epistemological uncertainty about death

Drs Broome and de Cates begin their discussion with an epistemological argument …