Euthanasia is a favourite essay topic for students. Some probably think it’s the name of an exotic flower they’ve trodden on some time. Others will simply argue it is a good thing, given their own youth and the ‘remote’ prospect of terminal illness. Its relevance expands with age, I’ve found, and these days I’m not so sure it’s wrong (ethically, I mean). Whether it is practical socially is quite another isssue.
However, I see today that the Dutch have set up a ‘flying squad’ (angels?) to deal with urgent cases, no doubt planning to increase the number of beneficiaries from the 2 – 3,000 a year to many more. There seem to be safeguards written into their mission to avoid wholesale suicide or murder but does this represent the thin end of a dangerous wedge? Or is it more civilised than counting on a compliant family doctor to deliver an ‘accidental’ overdose?
I can’t see that the Dutch run any greater risk of abuse with their system than we do with our lack of one. What say you?
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/01/dutch-mobile-euthanasia-units
Boadicea's Chariot 
Don’t forget that the purpose of life
Is to ensure a much fertilized wife
So, don’t let it phase ya
Just support euthanasia
The infirm add nothing but strife.
The handbag that everyone always dances around with euthanasia is the fear that grasping relatives will use this as a way of getting their hands on the old git’s cash a bit quicker than nature intended. I think the Dutch scheme as described is probably a step to far but I do see the day dawning when someone of sound mind, whatever that is, gives the ok and the clogs are popped without to much trouble. My kids have always told me that at the first sign of dribbling and or a bulk order for incontinence pads I’m off to the nearest home that will have me, perhaps by then I’ll have had enough and I’ll get a cheap day return (oh, won’t need the return) to Holland. And before someone says I’m being jocular on a serious subject I know what it’s like to lose a relative (93) who has said to me “I’ve had enough now boy, I just want to go.” And he did, a few days later, without any human intervention to speed the process.
Sipu,
I hope that your fertilised wife
Isn’t tempted to use her sharp knife
When she’s sick of your mania
And can’t quite containya
Excesses. She’ll just take your life! 🙂
Janus your most witty retort
Extracted from me a loud snort.
I shall now hide from my lady
All things pointed and bladey
And start to behave as I ought.
Good pomes!
apart from that I sure hope the Dutch scheme is cheaper than dignitas, which I thought very expensive.
How expensive are a few pills for God’s sakes? A tenner should do it!
Atta girl, CO. Nice to see you’re back on form!
I have a problem with the use of the word ‘euthanasia’ to describe what I would call Voluntary Suicide, since it conjures up all the horrors of the Nazi euthanasia programmes.
Indeed, it was precisely because the anti-Voluntary Suicide mob (mainly religious groups who seem think that because their God wants them to suffer so should everyone else) used that argument to try to convince people to overturn the Northern Territory’s ‘Right to Die’ legislation. They managed to convince large numbers of people that they faced Involuntary Euthanasia if the legislation was allowed to stand.
Nonetheless, a poll carried out throughout Australia found that well over 70% of the population wanted the right to Die with Dignity.
I want the right to sign away my life if I become incapable of looking after myself or thinking for myself. I want the right to say that I do not want to live with unbearable pain – or inconsolable loneliness.
I am appalled at the numbers of people who are put on the ‘path’ in the UK. For those that don’t know this is a mechanism whereby the medical services decide that someone is going to die, so while they are given pain-killing medicines they are not given food – they are, effectively, starved to death.
A friend of the family was put on this particular ‘path’ three times before he eventually died.
Can some one, anyone, please explain to me how it is ‘ethical’ to starve someone to death, but ‘unethical’ to end their lives with an over-dose of medication.
… and on ‘the path’ they are frequently not given water, either. If you did it to a dog, you’d be prosecuted.
I do not know if anybody has been following the rumpus that has been going on in the Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html
Actual article here. http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/02/22/medethics-2011-100411.full.pdf+html
The logic appears to be that there is no difference between abortion and killing a new born child. I have to confess that from an ethical point of view, it is an opinion that I have long held to be entirely logical. A newborn is to all intents and purposes as viable as a foetus. Of course it is a horrible line of thought and one that could take society into all sorts dangerous places if it is pursued. But I think this is the underlying logic of those who have always been against the idea of abortion, or even contraception. Once on that path, it tends to get steeper and more slippery leading us to places we did not want to be when we set out.
Male contraception, i.e. condoms have been around for a long time and have caused very little objection. I am not aware, though I could well be wrong, that the Catholic Church got overly excited about contraception until the arrival of the pill. (Incidentally, Malcom Gladwell -Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers – wrote about the man who created the pill in one of his books. It is a fascinating story of unintended consequences).
Although it was still just another form of contraception, the pill changed a lot of things, not least of all because it gave control to women, not just physically, but from a point of view controlling the ethical debate. From there it was not nearly such a great leap to countenance early term abortion, to late term abortion. Likewise the justifications for an abortion went from rape, disease and to saving the life of the mother, to being just another form of contraception.
Once society embarks on a road such as contraception or, as is the subject of this post, euthanasia, it needs to be very careful about determining where the absolute boundaries are. The problem is that they never seem to be absolute. Different people have different perspectives.
For the record, I cannot say that I would ever go so far as to ban abortion under every situation, had I the power, but I am pretty sure that I would never shake the hand of a practitioner of routine abortions. However, I think assisted should be made more available. We just have to be damn careful about the rules.
As for Boadicea disliking the word euthanasia, I have some sympathy. I dislike the term shop-lifter being used in place of thief.
Boa, “I have a problem with the use of the word ‘euthanasia’ to describe what I would call Voluntary Suicide, since it conjures up all the horrors of the Nazi euthanasia programmes.”
Yes but the word of course predates Nazism and was itself an attempt at euphemism – a typically British (I suspect) effort to avoid calling a spade a spade. Suicide was of course a crime until fairly recently – voluntary or assisted.
Here is a good one: ‘After birth abortion’ instead of ‘infanticide’.
Sipu
I find the article rather OTT. There is, in my opinion, a great difference between the abortion of an embryo or foetus that is incapable of independent life and the killing of a new-born baby… although we both know that many societies that we, otherwise, describe as civilised did practice infanticide.
Had I the power, I would most certainly go back to early term abortion. As to the current position of using abortion as an ‘after-the-event’ contraception, I’d start making irresponsible women pay for any abortion after two ‘free’ operations, with the proviso that they could show that they had taken precautions.
I think you will find that the Catholic Church has always been against contraception. According to some sources on the web, that was also the position of Protestant Churches until 1930.
Janus
The law making suicide a crime was repealed in 1961. That is a fair while ago. 🙂
Why? Why does the act of birth bestow upon an entity that has experienced it, a superior right to life to one that has not, but which in all other respects is equal and equally non viable. The new born baby cannot survive with out its mother or somebody else to take care of it. It has no conscience to speak of, or certainly no more of a conscience than it had 30 minutes earlier.
Does human life begin with the cutting of the umbilical cord? Maybe it begins when the baby has fully emerged from from the birth canal? Or may be it is partial parturition? Or when it enters the birth canal? Or when the waters break? Is it at 36 weeks? Or 35? You see where this goes? From a moral point of view, there is no difference between prenatal and postnatal infanticide. The reality of the matter is that it is all to do with individual human emotion and guilt. It is much easier to bond with a being once it is visible. Once you bond, you feel responsibility. That is why many will care and stop to wipe the tears of a the little child living next door to us who has fallen of his bike and scraped his knee, but do not give a serious toss about those children starving to death, 5,000 miles away, safely out of sight.
The academics who wrote the piece are using ‘reductio ad absurdum’ to highlight the moral dilemma attached to birth control.
Sipu, as a firm pro-life sort of fella, shouldn’t you (and the RC church in particular) be even bigger advocates of safe sex? Surley even you/they can’t actually (still) believe that a woman’s ovaries and a man’s sperm are forms of life which may not be interfered with? Or have I got it all wrong? 😮
Surely. 😦
Janus, dear chap, it is late, and so forgive me when I say that I have no idea what you are talking about. Please, for me, very slowly, tell me what stance it is that I am supposed to be taking and how that ties in to your concept of RC ideology. ( I am loath to use the word, dogma!) All I try to do is offer alternative views/arguments to those accepted by the unquestioning masses (to rhyme with ‘asses’, not, and I must emphasise this, despite your protests to the contrary, ‘farces’. (Or maybe I have it the wrong way round and you want to rhyme everything with ‘lasses’ and do not believe that anything rhymes with the other ‘masses’ (which is how smarter members of the British Catholic community pronounce celebrations of the ‘Sacrament of the Eucharist’))), such as your good self.
Crikey, have I got the right number of parentheses there?
Anyway, I would love to talk more, so do explain. Until tomorrow!