The Health Minister who shepherded euthanasia through the Dutch Parliament in 2001 is having second thoughts. Dr Els Borst, a doctor who was responsible for a number of other major health reforms, told euthanasia researcher Anne-Marie The that it had been wrong to legalise euthanasia before palliative care was improved in the Netherlands. "In the Netherlands, we first listened to the political and societal demand in favour of euthanasia," she said. "Obviously, this was not in the proper order."

Dr Borst was a controversial figure who was a passionate supporter of euthanasia. She even faced a no-confidence vote after it was reported that she exclaimed “Het is volbracht, it is accomplished”, the last words of Christ on the cross, after the passage of the act.

In Dr The’s just-published book on the history of euthanasia, Verlossers naast God ("Redeemer under God"), Dr Borst says that the law was passed too hastily under pressure from lawyers, bioethicists and policy-makers – not the doctors.

Dr The told NRC Handelblad that "There is the euthanasia law and then there is euthanasia reality. To think that we have neatly arranged everything by adopting the euthanasia law is an illusion. Reality is more complicated than that: every patient, every situation and every doctor is different."

She also agrees with criticism by the United Nations of the peculiar Dutch euthanasia law which does not actually legalise euthanasia, but allows a medical review board to suspend prosecution if doctors perform it under certain conditions. The UN said that checks and balances should come before and not after the fact.

"They have a point there. When the independent commission of medical, ethical and legal experts reviews a case the patient is already dead. But doing it before the fact makes the procedure much more complicated. It is time-consuming at a moment when time is of the essence. And there is a good chance that doctors will hide complicated cases from the commission. They already do that when there are questions about mental competence, or in the case of children, demented or otherwise handicapped patients. The law is still pretty vague about that." – NRC Handelsblad, Nov 30; Nederlands Dagblad, Dec 1