Bert Keizer (born 1947 in

Amersfoort Amersfoort () is a city and municipality in the province of Utrecht, Netherlands, about 20 km from the city of Utrecht and 40 km south east of Amsterdam. As of 1 December 2021, the municipality had a population of 158,531, making it the second- ...

) is a Dutch writer and

geriatrician Geriatrics, or geriatric medicine, is a medical specialty focused on providing care for the unique health needs of older adults. The term ''geriatrics'' originates from the Greek γέρων ''geron'' meaning "old man", and ιατρός ''iatros' ...

.https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200405/ldselect/ldasdy/86/86we14.htm Select Committee on Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill Written Evidence, Memorandum by Dr Bert Keizer, from the UK Parliament, House of Loards, 2008. He lived in England from 1968-1972 and studied philosophy at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

, then medicine at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

. He qualified as a doctor in 1981 and then worked shortly in

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. Since 1985 he has been a geriatrician in Amsterdam.

Writing

As a physician in a nursing home he has written about physician

assisted suicide Assisted suicide is suicide undertaken with the aid of another person. The term usually refers to physician-assisted suicide (PAS), which is suicide that is assisted by a physician or other healthcare provider. Once it is determined that the p ...

(which has been legal in the

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for some years), most notably in his book ''Het refrein is Hein'', which was translated into English (by Keizer himself) as ''Dancing with Mr D'' and published by Transworld-Doubleday in 1994. The book was also translated into German, Spanish, Japanese, Danish, Swedish and French. His style is contemplative, with an undercurrent of realism (or some would say pessimism) about the limits of medicine which most people prefer not to think about, and a remarkable intellectual honesty about the emotions of the patient as well as the physician. While the topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide was the most salient point for the literary criticism, it is not a very large part of the book.

References

1947 births Living people Dutch geriatricians Dutch writers Alumni of the University of Nottingham People from Amersfoort {{Netherlands-med-bio-stub