A DUTCH doctor has admitted illegally helping to end the lives of four desperately ill babies in an interview that is bound to fuel the debate over euthanasia in this country.

“All four babies had spina bifida — not the usual type but severely affected children where spina bifida was not the only problem. They were in constant pain,” said Dr Eduard Verhagen, a paediatrician who is campaigning for a further relaxation of Dutch euthanasia laws to free doctors like himself from the fear of prosecution.

Ending the babies’ suffering was worth the risk of being charged with murder, he said in an interview to be broadcast on Channel 4 tonight. “In the last minutes or seconds you see the pain relax and they fall asleep . . . At the end, after the lethal injection, their fists are unclenched and there is relief for everyone in the room. Finally they get what they should have been given earlier.”

Dr Verhagen, 42, a father of three, who works at the Groningen Hospital, has already caused intense controversy at home and abroad. His e-mail inbox is full of hate mail, much of it from America’s Christian Right. ‘Hitler is still alive and he lives in Groningen’, read one. But he has also received letters from parents around the world revealing that they ended up taking their own child’s life after the medical profession refused to help.

“We know the law says you are not allowed to kill anyone against their will,” he says. “We also know death can be more humane than continued life if it involves extreme suffering. We are facing patients, and their parents, who we think should be given the option of actively ending their lives.”

In the Netherlands euthanasia is illegal for patients under 12, though it was legalised for all other age groups in 2002, under certain conditions. There were 1,886 mercy killings last year. Dr Verhagen says Dutch doctors are ending the lives of about 15 babies a year, but only those with spina bifida are being reported. That is because a doctor who terminated the life of a spina bifida baby was acquitted in a 1995 test case.

He and colleagues have now drawn up a “Groningen Protocol” setting out guidelines that he would like the Government to adopt. A team of experts in one hospital must agree that the child has no quality of life and is beyond treatment. A team from another hospital must support that decision, and the parents must consent.

He says the protocol applies to less than 1 per cent of children in intensive care — those who live on when treatment is withdrawn yet there is no way to alleviate their pain. “We know children’s lives are being ended around the world. What we want to do is to be open and discuss it, not hide it.”

But there is opposition to Dr Verhagen’s protocol. Dr Rob de Jong, a paediatric neurosurgeon at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, is not convinced that newborn babies suffering from spina bifida suffer extreme pain, or that their condition is untreatable. “Perhaps this is more about terminating a life because of the problems they expect to encounter later.”

Karin and Edwin Hindriks are a couple Dr Verhagen could not help under present legislation. Their daughter, Bente, was born in Groningen Hospital four years ago with a severe form of Hallopeau-Siemens syndrome, a condition that made her skin blister and fall off when touched.

“The diagnosis was extremely rare and impossible to treat,” Dr Verhagen said. “We knew she would live a few years but not more than five or six. Then she would die of skin cancer.”

Mrs Hindriks asked that Bente’s suffering be ended: “We said we didn’t want this for our daughter, such a horrendous life, but they couldn’t do anything. The doctors said ‘We understand but we can’t do anything because if we do, then it’s murder.’ ” The Hindriks took their daughter home. “We saw her getting worse and worse,” Mrs Hindriks recalled. “When she was born she had ten toes and after six or seven months her toes had started to mesh, to grow together.” Her husband added: “It was painful to watch. You want it to stop.”

The Hindriks considered ending Bente’s pain themselves. Finally, after further complications, she died in her father’s arms. It says natural causes on her death certificate, but Mr Hindriks says it was more likely the morphine being administered for the pain.

Dr Verhagen believes doctors around the world are administering large doses of morphine to help suffering babies, knowing that can often result in death: “Do we leave these children until they are 18 and can ask for euthanasia? I don’t think so,” he said.

Sue Turton’s exclusive interview with Dr Eduard Verhagen will be broadcast tonight on Channel 4 News from 7pm.

DEATH LAWS

Netherlands: Euthanasia decriminalised in 1991, legalised in 2002. One in forty deaths there is now a legalised killing

Belgium: Legalised in 2002; only a couple of hundred cases a year

Switzerland: Legalised doctor-assisted suicide, but stopped short of legalising full euthanasia

France: Patients can refuse treatment but euthanasia not legal

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