(Via Live Action News, which says: "A new PBS documentary glowingly features euthanasia in Belgium [and] will send chills down the spine of any sane person who watches it.")
IN THE COMMENTS: Richard Dolan said:
So, this is what life-and-death looks like when it's reduced to bureaucratic, form-shuffling banality. Not pretty.
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61 comments:
Well, trans people are "depressed" by their biologically designated gender, so if this standard is accepted, pretty much nothing is out of question...
I am reminded of the folks who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge to kill themselves and survive. Almost to a man they regret the decision immediately upon free fall.
According to this Business Insider article:
90% of people who survive suicide attempts, including the most lethal types like shooting one's self in the head, don't end up killing themselves later. That statistic reflects the "temporary nature and fleeting sway of many suicidal crises," reports The New England Journal of Medicine.
A 1978 study of 515 people who were prevented from attempting suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971 found after more than 26 years 94% were still alive or had died of natural causes.
If they ran an experiment in Belgium where 1/2 of the mentally depressed euthanasia patients were actually not killed but just put to sleep, I wonder how many would go thru with the actual act upon waking.
I suspect most of these people would regret their choice, were that possible. But it isn't the government's job to protect people choices.
This situation really calls for a "disparate impact" approach. Are Blacks and LGBT people more likely to be depressed than normal, white people? If so, well, the numbers will have to adjusted somehow. Kind of like the draft.
I face the very real possibility that I will reach a condition (with advanced MS) that often leads to a euthanasia dilemma. So I hobble through the graveyard, I don't need any help if I want to feel depressed. For now I choose to ignore the topic.
Suicide rates by race in 2012 (per 100,000)
Whites 14.1
Native Amer 10.8
Asians 6.2
Hispanics 5.8
Blacks 5.5
White males are the most suicidal at rates around 25 overall as best I can tell from the stats.
I guess that white male privilege is overrated.
AFSP facts
Those stats above are for the US.
Brains that resist the final sleep are retained by evolution, but maybe minds as simulators are capable of realizing life isn't really worth it
Planned Retirement.
The peoples of the Low Countries have apostasised in their majorities from Christianity, and so they now worship their convenience and self-interest. Terrible tragedy, really, but societies prepare their own demise in any number of ways.
So,this is what life-and-death looks like when it's reduced to bureaucratic, form-shuffling banality. Not pretty.
There's a difference between a seventeen year old bummed out by zits and a seventy year old with inoperable cancer,and there are plenty of way stations in between.......,I can think of crimes so heinous that they deserve the death penalty. I can think of end of life issues so ghastly that they deserve an assisted suicide option. A slippery slope is a softer ride than forty miles of bad road to the abyss.
I swear by Apollo the physician that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.
I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master's children, as to my own; and likewise to all my pupils, who shall bind and tie themselves by a professional oath, but to none else.
With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage.
Nor shall any man's entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so.
You'd think performing euthanasia would leave the Belgian doctors feeling depressed.
Terminally depressed.
M. Python comments
This absolutely terrifies me. I have a 24 year old special needs daughter. She has a developmental delay, epilepsy, moderate hearing loss, and lupus. She can dress herself (sometimes needs correction to have her shirt on right or shoes on the right feet), go to the bathroom herself (sometimes needs help to be properly clean), feed herself, walk around... but she doesn't talk much. She loves High School Musical, Bumblebee from Transformers, the Ice Age movies, Blues Clues and {shudder} Barney. She loves to listen to music and put together puzzles.
She'll never have a "productive" life. What happens when someone decides that she's not worth the resources she needs? Someone who makes this decision after I'm gone?
Terrifying.
She has you, kimsch, and you know her worth. Whatever your daughter doesn't have, she has a knowledge of the love of a parent and therefore a doorway to God.
It's so much easier and CHEAPER to euthanize a depressed person than it is to help him or her to live. And if you try to help, you may fail, or the improvement may be only temporary, so you may be faced with the need to try again. Whereas you needn't ever worry again about the person who is euthanized.
25 years ago, euthanasia was common in the Netherlands. A doctor who admitted a chronic emphysema patient to ICU for respiratory failure would be fired forthwith. It was actually technically illegal but no doctor was ever prosecuted.
They have progressed considerably since then.
kimsch,
Same feeling here but slightly different. Children did not come to my wife and me. We are both only children. Our parents are Dead. We have several cousins but both of us are the youngest of the bunch by many years. When the time comes to negotiate our lives with the ever benign always merciful state and it's never venal representatives, we will also be alone.
Did you watch it Ann?
Thank you m stone and CWJ. She is my firstborn. 6 hours of labor, 4 pounds 10 ounces, APGARs of 9 and 9. I needed FORTY-TWO stitches because she had her arm up along the side of her head as she came out. Such a beautiful baby. Four years later a brother, and, on the day before her 10th birthday, another baby brother. I hope they'll keep an eye on her after I'm gone.
One of the main responsibilities of the government is to protect its people from harm. Which is why we have military and police.
Once we start deciding which individuals can harm which individuals, we are going down the wrong road.
But for some reason, we seem to think the government doesn't need to protect the unborn, or the suicidal.
I don't know why, if I can decide to kill myself, why can't I decide to kill others?
Either way, it's taking a life.
Death comes in its own time, no need to accelerate its coming.
Meanwhile, it bears mentioning that in addition to the question of (1) people who want to die (although more accurately, they want some particular hardship to go away) there is (2) the totally distinct issue of some other person killing them or otherwise being involved in the killing. That is to say, there is on the one hand the issue of the death, and on the other hand the causation of death.
Whether a person has a "right" to be dead, so as to eliminate suffering or whatever, the act of killing an innocent human being has always been understood to be mala in se and, hence, objectively criminal.
Whatever the answer is to human suffering, it does not involve turning someone else into an agent of death, an executioner.
Meanwhile, don't be so sure that the person killed goes to a better place or ends up better off than before. They may find for themselves worse sufferings beyond this life than are in it.
Also, if this is the society that we are going to have from now on, then we owe an apology to Dr. Karl Brandt and the other practitioners of the German euthanasia experience. We need to say to them, "Sorry we hanged you for doing what people are patted on the back for today."
One of the main responsibilities of the government is to protect its people from harm. Which is why we have military and police.
Once we start deciding which individuals can harm which individuals, we are going down the wrong road.
If it is wrong to decide which individuals can harm which individuals, it is wrong to have police and military.
That is, after all, what they are: the individuals the government has decided are allowed to harm other individuals.
They may find for themselves worse sufferings beyond this life than are in it.
Or they may find themselves rewarded while the devout Christians burn in hell. Anything's possible.
There is certainly no intelligent reason to expect that brain-dead people suffer. No brain, no consciousness; no consciousness, no suffering.
I guess that white male privilege is overrated.
That's because it isn't real. It's just a mirage sighted by dopey feminists who fall for the apex fallacy.
I swear by Apollo the physician that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment...
Just another meaningless formality, just like --
I, Barak Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
again, I go to the movie the end. There burt reynolds wants to die but he's too much of a coward he tries to get Dom Deluise to kill him.
Only at a certain point he doesn't want to die, but Dom Deluise is still trying to kill him.
I imagine you go through a lot of mind changing where you want to die, and then don't.
I'm not sure if doctors should be making it their mission to aid people who want to kill themselves. First, do no harm, is the the Oath at it's most basic.
And crazy people or suicidal people are not in their right mind. So why are doctors catering to peoples desires who may not have the necessary capabilty to give consent.
Just another meaningless formality
Not even that, since the version being (partially) hasn't been in wide usage for a couple of thousand years.
Given that it also forbade doctors from being surgeons, we should probably be thankful for that.
Well, you know...once someone becomes a burden on society, why not hover over them with a needle loaded and ready for that moment of weakness when they say, "ok"?
It fits in with a standard liberal strategy (most famously on display during the attempt to pass the equal rights amendment)--only those who vote against you get to keep voting. Once someone votes for you, that vote is permanent. They are never allowed to vote on that issue again.
"Did you watch it Ann?"
Of course. I would not have embedded it without watching it!
We recommend an alternative system—the complete lives system—which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles." Principles for allocation of scarce medical resources -Ezekiel Emmanuel Obamacare Architect
See how nicely they snuff both Trig Palin and leave a loophole for themselves? After all, when interpreted by politicians, who is going to be of higher instrumental value than a politician?
Not even that, since the version being (partially) hasn't been in wide usage for a couple of thousand years.
Given that it also forbade doctors from being surgeons, we should probably be thankful for that.
Rev,
You missed the point; one reason the oath was created was to distinguish between those who would take a life and those who would heal and save a life.
So this dividing point for physicians has existed for more than two millenia. Interesting to see this weigh as heavily on a pre-Christian society as much as a post-Christian one.
The future "Obamacare"?
So the doctor kills 2 people a month.
I wonder what he charges.
patients who want to die.
Beside the fact that The State owns their bodies, people shouldn't be allowed to do what they want to do if I don't like it.
Now what is the definition of 'depressed'?
Can it change to 'not a desirable life'? Can the state deem a person's life depressed?
We all have our ups and downs but can the state decide in our downs are criteria to end our lives?
See if the government finds it cannot support an increasing population, or segments of the population do not conform to their expectations, then they may decide to liberalize their definition of 'depressed' to fit their goals.
On the one hand, it is comforting to think that I could choose to have help ending my life under a variety of circumstances that I can imagine.
On the other hand, it is the slipperiest of slopes as it seems almost inevitable that people would be manipulated into making these choices by friends and family, medical professionals etc., or even that the government would end up making the choice for them since the individual is too [insert malady] to make the obviously, most reasonable choice of suicide themselves. I can imagine being suicided for my own good.
tim in vermont said...
See how nicely they snuff both Trig Palin and leave a loophole for themselves? After all, when interpreted by politicians, who is going to be of higher instrumental value than a politician?
Not only that, but if you're registered to vote for the other party or don't give sufficient "campaign contributions" to the 'right' party, your prognosis is grim. Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel wrote in The Atlantic that he plans on dying at 75 and suggested we should all do the same. Go ahead, Doctor. You first.
This meshes nicely with the Belgian activities in the Congo.
Well, at least they're not using them for spare parts.
Yet.
IF all persons were to receive a lethal implant that would instantly be triggered by pushing button that must be on one's person at all times, I'd guess few who would reach the traditional three-score-and-ten.
So society can't execute a "crazy" person because they don't have the capacity to understand the consequences of their actions and therefore weren't responsible, but it would be okay to help someone them kill themselves if they are depressed?
I suppose it's easier than treating them with antidepressants and talk therapy.
Disturbing. I have always found this, from the Catholic catechism, a compelling discussion, and moving for nonbelievers:
Suicide
Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.
Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.
If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.
Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.
What a farce. How can you say mental health disease is "uncurable?" It happens everyday. And to not tell the son -- who could shed insight on that question -- is despicable.
None of these doctors and bureaucrats are following the law.
If you're depressed and want to kill yourself, kill yourself. If you can't, then stop demanding other people become murderers for your convenience.
"Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide."
But it's not really suicide, is it? It's murder.
"Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil,...
This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses [that I have warned] you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live..."
Deut. 30:15, 19.
I am reminded of the expanding definition of "blighted area" in eminent domain law. Who ends up getting hurt there? Same as here - the poor and weak.
My mom has told me in no uncertain terms that if and when the day comes that she succumbs to Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia that someone would show her the mercy of putting a pillow over her head. Given the same circumstance, I would want the same thing. Let me go gentle into that good night.
I don't know if I would be strong enough to grant her wish personally if it ever comes to it.
It's much easier to euthanize a robot.
A slippery slope is a softer ride than forty miles of bad road to the abyss.
It all ends at the abyss.
Crunchy, my mother has decided to stop eating as of today as her form of dementia has pretty much stopped her ability to swallow. She can still handle fluids but even specially prepped food now causes hours long choking incidents that leaves her scared and crying.
Its all very well to sit in a place of health and point fingers. Sometimes dying is slow and miserable, I am thankful that she has repeatedly made the same decisions and is now only a few weeks from the end of her suffering.
Thank goodness for medical directives and hard decisions made while still lucid. The medical community could keep her alive with feeding tubes and machines for quite a long time, despite the loss in quality of life.
Suffering should not be the forced end to life for many due to medical nanny states.
Mark said...
Crunchy, my mother has decided to stop eating as of today as her form of dementia has pretty much stopped her ability to swallow. She can still handle fluids but even specially prepped food now causes hours long choking incidents that leaves her scared and crying.
Its all very well to sit in a place of health and point fingers. Sometimes dying is slow and miserable, I am thankful that she has repeatedly made the same decisions and is now only a few weeks from the end of her suffering.
Thank goodness for medical directives and hard decisions made while still lucid. The medical community could keep her alive with feeding tubes and machines for quite a long time, despite the loss in quality of life.
Suffering should not be the forced end to life for many due to medical nanny states.
I went through the same thing with my mom. She just decided that she wanted to leave and wasn't going to eat anymore.
It is agonizing.
But it was the familys' decision. Not the hospitals or the governments.
How does anyone who supports Roe v Wade object to this? "It's my body, I can do what I want with it."
Old enough to have an abortion, old enough to commit suicide.
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