October 9, 2004
UNSPEAKABLE
Euthanasia debate in Europe focuses on children up to 12 years old (The State, Matthew Schofield, October 9th, 2004)
Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that's known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.
But the children's deaths, and the possibility that the protocol will become standard practice throughout the Netherlands, have sparked heated discussion about whether the idea of assisting adults who seek to die should ever be applied to children and others who are incapable of making, or understanding, such a request.
"Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate," said Henk Jochemsen, the director of Holland's Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. "Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory." [...]
Dutch doctors have some intentional role in 3.4 percent of all deaths, according to statistics published in the medical journal The Lancet. About 0.6 percent are patients who didn't ask to be euthanized, the journal said.
Dutch courts often treat those cases leniently if an investigation determines that the doctor acted out of concern for the patient's well-being.
Opponents of expanding euthanasia to the young cite a recent Dutch court ruling against punishment for a doctor who injected fatal drugs into an elderly woman after she told him she didn't want to die.
The court determined that he'd made "an error of judgment," but had acted "honorably and according to conscience."
Which means he played God and the court approved. The main difficulty modern man has in recognizing and combating evil is that, as he rejects any external objective morality as childish and unscientific, he thinks evil is determined largely by the motivation of the evildoer. In a world where we are each the ultimate determiner of right and wrong, a doctor who dispatches an elderly patient against her wishes is evil if he did so because he was fed up with the old biddy, or perhaps was paid to do so by greedy relatives. But if he did so because he lay awake fretting about her discomfort and future and concluded that there was no “value” to her life that he could see, he is a sort of existential hero wrestling courageously with the oh-so-complex vagaries of modern life. She has become no more than a dog to him, and he is the kindly dog owner tearfully putting down his loyal pet.
This is why so many need to demonize evil and rely on caricatures. We do so to avoid confronting the truth of where these beliefs are leading us. Nazis were drooling semi-maniacs awash in pagan voodoo and a warped compulsion to kill. Communists were embittered fanatics bent on bloody revenge against the wealthy and privileged. Islamists are wide-eyed sword wavers dreaming of martyrdom and celestial virgins. Some do indeed resemble these caricatures, but the majority were just like serious, committed Dutch doctors and judges dispatching helpless, sick babies and fearful elderly types who counted on them to save and protect them.
Actually we should consider euthanasia for violent children regardless of age group, as well as for the severely retarded. Neither group is worth the cost to maintain.
Posted by: Bart at October 9, 2004 8:48 PMSo, Peter, do you reject out of hand any situation in which a person is "put out of their misery," as they used to say in the movies? I'm reluctant to institutionalize euthanasia for obvious reasons, but in certain situations (a painful terminal illness in a patient who doesn't want to keep suffering), I don't have a problem with it. I don't think that's a slippery slope, nor does it make me a Nazi or like that doctor who killed the patient who didn't want to die. I just think it's an exceptional, unpleasant remedy for some cases where the lack of such a remedy would be pointlessly cruel.
Posted by: PapayaSF at October 9, 2004 9:31 PMPapaya
We can all think of such cases. But are you referring ones where the person, an elderly sick person, wants to go? This article isn't about them.
When a doctor AND a family make decisions like this privately in hopeless or tragic cases, we are dealing with something highly personal, intimate and unique on the edge of life's mysteries. These cases are gut-wrenching and may not admit of pat ethical answers, but they aren't precedent or policy for anyone else. We are dealing with something very different when the state and the medical profession assume the authority to decide what kind of life is worth living and what kind is not, and to act on it without the involvment of family and with the backing of the law. The argument that "it has always been done", so let's bring it out into the public square, codify it legally and make a state power out of it, is the evil, and also the slippery slope.
Bart: And in your ideal state, who makes those decisions? Do you really think troubled children and the severely retarded are a big drag on national productivity and our standard of living? Or do you just worry that they spoil the view?
I wanted to see just where your line was, and I agree. By "institutionalize" I meant, in shorthand, just what you've spelled out more clearly. Personal decision vs. institutional power.
Posted by: PapayaSF at October 9, 2004 11:32 PMPeter,
It's quite simple. IQ under 50, lethal injection. IQ under 75, sterilization.
As for violent children, this is also self-evident. In the South Bronx, it is commonplace for drug dealers to hire 12 year old hitmen. Those hitmen should be executed. There are children even as young as 6 or 7 who so violent that we have to put them in maximum security facilities. There is a prison in upstate New York for these little monsters. Mike Tyson is an example. The cost of keeping them alive far outweighs the cost of lethal injection.
Of course, you and your soulmates can volunteer to pay for the idiots and the monsters. But, my guess is you'd prefer to make the rest of us subsidize your moral superiority rather than fork over the dough yourself.
Posted by: Bart at October 10, 2004 6:38 AMBart:
Heck no, I want to save money too. But aren't you setting the bar a little low, you old softy? Do you think the IQ's of 85 don't cost us? And while we're at it, how about the extremely brilliant? Bunch of depressed, unstable neurotics who can't hold a job or keep a marriage together and tend to vote left anyway. They cost us way too much and very few of them live up to their promise.
My nice neighbour is into MADD and wants drunk drivers dispatched. But only on a second offence because she's a bit of a bleeding heart.
"Bart's got a little list. He's got a little list".
Posted by: Peter B at October 10, 2004 8:42 AMI agree with your neighbor, but being soft-headed as well as soft-hearted, I'd wait until a third DUI conviction, (assuming no accidents with injuries), before execution.
I ain't kiddin'.
Posted by: Michael "I Too Have a List" Herdegen at October 10, 2004 9:30 AMSpeaking as a high IQ unstable neurotic who can hold a job, has achieved in his field at its highest level but can't get keep a relationship with a woman, I think your remark is pretty funny. We as a group do not cost the taxpayer money, even if we dramatically underachieve by becoming truck drivers or, worse, liberal arts professors. That is the simple difference. Voting patterns for Mensans are all over the map, although there is generally little support for the religious right. Libertarians are commonplace.
I was simply working with the bell curve of IQ where 75 gets you over 2 standard deviations below average, and 50 gets you 4 standard deviations below average. When the relatively small numbers of these people are taken into account, along with the grotesque cost of all the programs needed to keep them alive, you should readily see the logic. One could of course move the bar higher say to 100, without really negatively affecting the argument but as median Black IQ in the US is in the mid 80s or so, the disparate racial impact of such legislation would be problematic.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of America's greatest jurists, said in defending the sterilization of the mentally defective,'Three generations of idiots is enough.'
The issue of DUI can be solved by a draconian application of insurance laws and the ready availability of public transport. As someone who is about to go out and watch football all afternoon with his fantasy league competitors at a local sports bar, I have already arranged the drive there and the cab ride home. Further, the current level of DUI in the States (.08) is absurd except as a means of revenue enhancement on the part of the State, not unlike most speed limits. A more realistic level would be perhaps .12 or even .15, when you really shouldn't be driving.
Two other notes. I am also an amateur Savoyard and I would frankly enjoy setting a DUI roadblock outside a MADD meeting and seeing what comes out when it's over. I bet you more than a few of those meddlesome busybodies is pretty soused.
Posted by: Bart at October 10, 2004 11:49 AMJ.H. is an anti-Semite thinly camouflaged as a white nationalist, Bart wants to kill off 'tards and bullies.
I reiterate my suggestion that they shack up together.
At least I get further confirmation for my hypothesis that Mensans are freakazoid nutballs.
Posted by: Eugene S. at October 10, 2004 4:02 PM