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Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Hard Cases
What on Earth can a pro-life Curmudgeon say to this:
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A hospital in the Netherlands (search) — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.
The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital (search) came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.In August, the main Dutch doctors’ association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia (search) cases for terminally ill people “with no free will,” including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.
When euthanasia is “merely” a physician-assisted suicide by a man of sound mind, it’s horrifying enough. For your Curmudgeon, who cherishes life and is incapable of comprehending any other mindset, it was supremely difficult to force himself, gritting his teeth the whole way, to admit that there is no conceivable warrant by which any third party could justify intruding forcibly into so intimate and difficult a decision. (The hazards of the thing, of course, must not be discounted, as it’s altogether too easy for a white-coated authority figure to bully a sick man into a decision against his interests. For reasons beyond the scope of this rant, your Curmudgeon knows that all too well.)
But to euthanize “people with no free will”...!
Who will speak for them, other than those white-coated authority figures, whose interest in extending their own authority to the walls of the Universe can hardly be doubted? They are the keepers of all the relevant records, the oracles from whose emissions the medically un-knowledgeable must make their decisions. With those advantages, they can maneuver a layman into any decision they deem appropriate—and please, no carping about how a doctor would never do such a thing. Persons gravitate toward their trades in part on the basis of their psychic compensations, and one of the most significant of the ones that pertain to medicine is precisely that mantle of authority, against which non-physicians are so reluctant to argue.
The idea of legalizing the medical execution—there’s no point in mincing words—of “people with no free will,” at the discretion of their attending physicians and a supposedly independent panel of other physicians, should be shot down at once. If the Dutch fail to do it, expect the idea to be proposed here in the immediate future, just as the idea of physician-assisted suicide was imported here from Holland.
And yet there are surely some very hard cases.
Michael Williams cites one:
Imagine…
...a child with painful wounds similar to burns covering most of his or her body.
...having to wrap each tiny little infant finger with Vaseline gauze and then cover it with gauze to prevent the hand from webbing and contracting.
...never being able to hold your child tight because if you did, their skin would blister or shear off.
...a child who will never know what it’s like to run, skip or jump, or to play games with other children because even the slightest physical contact will injure his or her skin.
...a child who screams out each time it is bathed because the water touching its open wounds creates incredible pain.
...a diet of only liquids or soft foods because blistering and scarring occur in the esophagus.
...an active baby with his knees soaked in blood from the normal act of crawling.
...a teenager with stumps for hands, the affected fingers long gone.
This is the nightmare of life with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB)
As Michael puts it:
In other cases, babies simply can’t survive without life support, and even with it they won’t live very long. So do we have a moral duty to spend thousands of dollars to extend the life of a doomed baby from one month to three months? Thousands of dollars that could be spent treating other patients with curable maladies? I don’t know. Is it worth the health risk for a mother to carry and deliver such a baby even when his or her condition is known far in advance?
Even thinking about the problem makes me ill, and I pray that I’m never faced with such a decision. However, as with battlefield mercy killings and adult euthansia, I don’t think the solution is as simple as “never under any circumstances”.
To pray is about all one can do. Nor would a good man, even the best of men, utterly reject the idea of a mercy killing under such terrible conditions. To which your Curmudgeon must say: if Man can recognize a hard case, insusceptible to incorporation in any sweeping legal rationale, then surely God can as well. But remember that “hard cases make bad law.” It would be lunacy—malevolent lunacy—to premise a law allowing doctors to make such decisions on a handful of hard cases. Far better that the practice remain formally illegal under all circumstances, and trust juries to recognize and allow the exceptions as they arise.
Comments
My attitude toward euthanasia is…well, let’s just say rather more open than yours. But nevertheless the notion that anyone would sanction euthanizing any patient who lacked the capacity to make an informed and voluntary choice and communicate that choice unambiguously…well, it boggles the mind.
Posted by Matt on 12/01/2004 at 09:43 AMI agree with all of this. The problem is only that what is illegal tends to be abhorred, both by individuals and (moreso, perhaps) by institutions. Thus, if the prohibition against euthanasia remains universal, doctors are unlikely to receive training—even hypothetically—in its clinical, social, ethical and moral aspects. Ignorance of euthanasia, and the atmosphere of the ‘unspeakable’ surrounding it, can only make physicians less capable of providing appropriate counsel—even perhaps less capable of arguing against euthanasia, when such exceptions are approved by law.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/01/2004 at 11:36 AMDear God never let me have to make one of those decisions.
Posted by og on 12/01/2004 at 01:05 PMJohn;
You voice all of your objects as though they were *bad* things.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 12/01/2004 at 01:40 PM“Persons gravitate toward their trades in part on the basis of their psychic compensations ...”
Indeed they do. And within limits, even the more negative attractions are OK. If there’s a smidgin of blood-lust in a good surgeon, under control, or a hint of the bully in the head nurse (neither exactly unknown) what of it?
But making lemonade of emotional lemons has a limit. There are personal qualities that go beyond requiring some thought or effort to use pro-socially: they are positively evil.
What kind of person will be attracted to the medical profession by the promised psychic compensations to be found in cold-bloodedly killing innocents without their consent?
Do we want people who desire that sort of satisfaction to be doctors? I for one don’t.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/03/2004 at 10:36 AMThe Church has a position on this:
Posted by Mark LaRochelle on 12/03/2004 at 05:01 PM
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