The number of people euthanised in the Netherlands this year is set to exceed 7,000 in what has been described by the director of the country’s only specialist clinic as the end of “a taboo” on killing patients who want to die. This year’s figures represent a 67% rise from five years ago when 4,188 people were euthanised by doctors in the country. “If there was any taboo, it has gone,” said Steven Pleiter, director of the only clinic in the Netherlands that specialises in euthanasia. “There is a generation coming up, the postwar generation, which is now coming to the life stage in which they will die, and this generation has a far more clear and expressed opinion about how to shape their own life end. I expect far more growth in the years to come.” The increase in numbers has led the clinic director to recently launch a massive recruitment drive with TV and radio appearances, to direct-mail shots and the placement of adverts in medical journals, to hire doctors to keep up with demand. Specifically, the work involves assessing requests for euthanasia and then, for those whose request is approved, administering intravenously, or in a drink, a drug putting the patient into a coma, and then a second disabling their lungs. Pleiter asks his doctors to work eight to 16 hours a week for this organisation. “A full-time job involved in the death of people is probably a bit too much, and ‘probably’ is a euphemism,” he adds.