“There she is again.” Halfway through the conversation, Jos van Wijk shows a message that has just arrived. He stretches out his arm to Petra de Jong, who is sitting opposite him in a cafe in the center of Apeldoorn. “Look.”
It reads: “Is there a counselor who can help me for a substantial fee? I’m sorry I’m stalking you like that.” This week the woman of the message has called several times. She wants to die. “I get calls like this a few times a week.”
How often.
Van Wijk: “I remain laconic about it.”
De Jong: “She called me today during a board meeting. Then I refer, because I can’t help her. I’m not going to tell her where to find the cure. I’m just saying: all the information is on our site.”
Van Wijk: “At a certain point I send: ‘it is now ready, I am not a care provider’.”
Petra de Jong and Jos van Wijk are the most famous faces of Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW). She is a board member and was closely involved in the establishment in 2013, he is chairman and member from the very beginning. The main purpose of CLW is to provide a last will to its members. That is 27,500, of whom the majority joined in 2017, when the cooperative thought it had found a product that could be supplied legally. ‘Medium X’ is available from wholesalers, in hefty quantities, as it is normally used to keep laboratory fluids free of mold and bacteria. CLW planned to stock up with members so that they would take home the correct lethal proportions.
The Public Prosecution Service put a stop to the ambitious project, because it is seen as assisted suicide, which is punishable by law. Since that reprimand, the CLW has suspended its plans and, in its own words, primarily provides information.
Earlier this year it turned out that at least five directors and members of CLW are being investigated by the Public Prosecution Service on suspicion of assisted suicide, among other things, Jos van Wijk is suspected of participating in a criminal organization aimed at assisted suicide. “That was a bit of a shock,” he says. In September 2021, fourteen police officers were unannounced in his home, while Van Wijk was on Ameland at the time. They seized documents and data carriers, but also found a large amount of last will – more than is needed for their own use.
The Public Prosecution Service may suspect Van Wijk that he wanted to sell it, he himself denies. “Part of it was for myself. And I tested possible delivery addresses, in case we are allowed to officially deliver in the future.” De Jong also received an unannounced visit from the police last year, but she is not currently a suspect.
Alex S., one of the CLW members suspected of assisted suicide, will face court on January 21. According to the Public Prosecution Service, he delivered 33 people who subsequently died. S. received 694 payments for the drug, which he sold through Marktplaats, among others.
Also read: About the lawsuit of Alex S.
Autonomous route
The suspicions of the Public Prosecution Service only make De Jong and Van Wijk more combative. Apparently there are still taboos to be broken, they say.
How did this theme become so important in their lives? Jos van Wijk (73), who has worked as an interim manager for a long time and is now retired, comes from a progressive Amsterdam family with a father who got everything out of life. “He often said: I’d rather be 55 with pleasure than 65 with anger.” He turned 54.” His mother got lung cancer at a late age. Van Wijk then tried to arrange a euthanasia declaration, which took a lot of effort. Years later he saw that the Dutch Association for a Voluntary End of Life (of which the CLW is a corollary) was looking for volunteers to give presentations.
Petra de Jong says that her career as a lung specialist has played an important role. “Lots of people die horribly from lung disease. They suffocate.” One of her first patients, 44 years old, did not want to live anymore. “He asked if I wanted to give him something so that he could end it himself. I thought he was entitled to that.”
De Jong herself made a recipe that she “had read in a book that it had to be good”. “But it took him nine hours to die.” This needs to be arranged better, she thought at the time. Years later, in 2002, the euthanasia law was passed for people with unbearable suffering. Before that, doctors also performed euthanasia, but it was always a question of whether the disciplinary board would do anything about it. The case was usually dropped.
CLW was founded to draw attention to the ‘autonomous route’, for people who for various reasons did not receive euthanasia. According to the law, a doctor may refuse a request for euthanasia. According to De Jong and Van Wijk, the Completed Life Act will only offer a limited solution: it is only for people aged 75 and older.
People who live too long are also victims who deserve protection
Petra de Jong
They believe that anyone who wants to die should be able to die as humanely as possible. “People who live too long are also victims who deserve protection,” says De Jong. She outlines the changes in Dutch health care – better resuscitation techniques, more medicines – that she says have led to people living “sometimes too long”. “It would give old people so much peace of mind if they could keep death in their own hands.”
During your members’ meeting in November last year, members discussed among themselves where you can buy the drug. Is that allowed?
Van Wijk: „It is not easy to indicate the limit of assisted suicide. The Supreme Court says that anything that makes suicide easier is punishable by law. In practice you see that giving information is allowed and happens on a large scale. But you shouldn’t sit around and deal like Alex S. Then you won’t get any support from us either. I got so angry about that. It wasn’t until he was arrested that we knew he was a member of our organization, otherwise we would have done something.
“When our plan to provide it was canceled in 2018 because of the Public Prosecution Service, we still organized regional living room groups, where people talked about the end of life. They were visited en masse by people who thought: there I can get the information about how I can get that stuff. We heard via-via that an underground network was being created, that people would offer it to each other and give it to each other.” For that reason, the meetings have now stopped.
Van Wijk and De Jong knew they could be prosecuted for assisted suicide if they put the CLW’s goals into practice. Van Wijk: “But only if a causal relationship is demonstrated between the provider and the deceased, we thought. That’s difficult. Only show a connection if someone has it lying around the house for years.” In the case of Alex S., the Public Prosecution Service is now trying to do so.
De Jong expects that the new cabinet will “make a movement” regarding a self-chosen end of life. “I don’t think it’s possible not to talk about self-determination about death for another four years.”
Van Wijk and De Jong were both raised religiously and religiously. Although De Jong’s parents were Reformed, in 2010 they chose to end their lives together. Dad had terminal esophageal cancer, and mom didn’t want to go on alone. “They had seen many people suffering towards the end of their lives.” De Jong knew in advance that it was going to happen. It was exciting, she says. “Will they be on the doormat when we come in later? But they were in bed with their arms around each other.”
Perhaps your mother would have been happy without your father.
De Jong: “I don’t think so. They knew each other from the age of sixteen. Their lives were intertwined.”
Criticism of the free availability of drug X is that people who are suicidal can end their lives impulsively and in a relatively easy way, when they could actually have been treated.
Van Wijk: “You cannot leave a huge group of elderly people out in the cold because of incidents with vulnerable people taking a wrong turn. Only 2 percent of our members are under the age of 40. The average age is seventy. The large group wants control, certainty and tranquility.”
The average age is seventy. The large group wants control, certainty and tranquility
Jos van Wijk
There are stories about people who died in an unpleasant way from substance X, while you claim it is humane. Since 2014, the National Poisons Information Center received a total of 22 reports from health care workers who saw symptoms such as vomiting, shortness of breath and confusion.
Van Wijk: “Death is not always a pleasure. People can fight. But I’ve also heard stories of people watching their loved ones die peacefully. It should be better registered, but that is not happening because of the taboo that rests on it.”
How is the drug sold in the ideal world of Coöperatie Laatste Wil?
Van Wijk: “I have a very clear picture. There is a factory that takes care of the purchasing, the packaging, and they keep it well. If someone wants it, it will be delivered to their home.”
So a customer can also say: I want it tomorrow?
Van Wijk: “Could be, but we are thinking of a waiting period to get the impulse out. We also had a waiting period of six months for the purchasing groups in 2017.”
So you do recognize that there may be an impulse.
Van Wijk: „With such a waiting period, we mainly meet the social doubts. I just mentioned that a few times a week I get calls from people who want to die. Someone said, ‘Sir, I’ve been scared for sixty years. I want to die.’ But to another, it may seem like someone has suddenly decided to kill themselves. I also think: look at the preliminary phase, the treatment of people with psychological problems.”
De Jong: “In psychiatry I also see a kind of unprecedented optimism, as if they can cure everything. Well, of course that is not the case in practice.”
After a short silence: “We are not a suicide club, but a self-determination club.”
You can talk about suicide at the national helpline 113 Suicide Prevention. Phone 0800-0113 or www.113.nl.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 13, 2022
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