MeTZelf is an organization dedicated to individual freedom in the field of health care in the Netherlands and the world. The statement below, which applies to all areas of health care (including mental), lists our goals and values. We believe these goals cannot be achieved by more and more laws, but rather by abolishing all laws which violate these principles.

1. Physicians, therapists, and other (para)medical practitioners are to be directly employed by the client and serve no other interests than the client’s. They are to receive payment directly from the client(’s private insurance). Subsidies for medical care for the needy are to be paid directly to the client, not to the provider of the service.
   
2. All decisions about testing and treatment, including the use of pharmaceuticals (so including decisions about beginning, continuing, and discontinuing treatment) are to be made by the client him/herself, or when that is genuinely not possible, such as in the case of a young child, someone who is severely cognitively handicapped, a heavily demented elderly person, or someone in a coma, by the (legal) guardian, who will usually be a family member, but never the person’s doctor, nurse, or therapist.
3. Each person at all times has the right to solicit advice and treatment from any physician or therapist s/he chooses, including medical specialists (also without a referral from the family physician).
4. The client (or, if appropriate, guardian) is to be provided any and all information available and necessary for him/her to make an educated decision, including information about the physician or therapist, such as experience, success rate, and ties with pharmaceutical and/or medical industries; and the statistical chances for recovery and/or for complications and/or side-effects, including long term.
5. Every person has the right to purchase pharmaceuticals (so without a doctor’s prescription). Information about pharmaceuticals is to be made available as described in point 4 above.
6. Health care professionals are not to be involved in matters which are not strictly about healing, such as eligibility, (child) custody, competence, or imprisonment.
7. Ending a life is not a form of healing. It is not the physician’s role to decide who has the right to end his/her life and who doesn’t. This means that the physician will commit neither euthanasia nor involuntary incarceration of someone suicidal. A free pharmaceutical market will provide access to the means to end one’s own life if desired. Physicians should neither assist nor interfere. Ending someone else’s life is murder.
8. The exercising of other human rights, such as the right to housing (assisted or not) and education, may not be made conditional to the person subjecting him/herself to any form of medicine or therapy.
9. The client’s privacy is paramount. This includes a prohibition of sharing information among physicians without the client’s consent unless absolutely necessary to save life in an emergency.
10. The making of “living wills” or declarations as to the type of care the person would or would not want when s/he is no longer able to speak for him/herself is encouraged, and such wills or declarations are to be respected.
11. Physicians, therapists, and other (para)medics are subject to liability just as the practitioner of any other profession.
12. Every person has the right to be medically educated. This means that medicine should be an available subject for every student throughout his/her school career, from kindergarten through university. Text books are to be written by professionals who have no ties or interest what-so-ever in the pharmaceutical or medical industries. Adults, too, have the right to access a medical education.
    

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