For Belgium's Tormented Souls, Euthanasia-Made-Easy Beckons

Marc and Eddy Verbessem were euthanized last year.

By NAFTALI BENDAVID

PUTTE, Belgium—In this small village amid an array of Flemish farms, they were an unusual but seemingly happy pair, two 43-year-olds who were identical, deaf twins. Townspeople recalled seeing Marc and Eddy Verbessem around town frequently, talking animatedly in sign language together, tooling around in a small blue car, and regularly buying two copies of a popular gossip magazine.

No one expected them to decide to die on purpose.

According to their doctor, the twins had developed a genetic disorder that was making them blind, and several years ago they began pressuring him to put them to death. Even in Belgium, with its decade-old euthanasia law, the request was striking, since the twins were relatively young and not terminally ill. But their doctor says that as their condition worsened and threatened their independence, they would hand him envelopes containing a blunt request for euthanasia—and, for good measure, a list of symptoms they said were making their lives unbearable.

The twins' ordeal wasn't publicly known at the time, but their request—and its fulfillment last December—highlights an emotional battle over expanding Belgium's euthanasia law, and is reverberating in the end-of-life debate in the U.S.

(More here.)