quote: AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch government intends to expand its current euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the parents' consent.
I'm most worried about the gradual transformation of "terminal illness" into something else. "Slippery slope" might be a weak argument, but the Netherlands have already shown themselves unable to enforce the restrictions it puts on this. Each step away from "doctors don't kill people" adds more and more potential people to the sphere of who it is seen as acceptable to kill.
quote:The outlook for children with spina bifida has changed dramatically over the years. A study published in 2001 found that with appropriate medical care, at least 75% of children born with the most severe form of spina bifida (myelomeningocele) will most likely live until their early adult years. The authors point out that providing supportive care for these adults is challenging.
posted
Thanks for posting FG - and Dag. I'm kind of buried. I have a lot to do over the next few days - getting ready to go to DC for the oral arguments at the Supreme Court. (Not going inside - I'll be outside with other disability rights folks.)
Notice they're still conflating the issue of disability and "terminal" in this. The Groningen protocols don't call for children to be "terminal" in the sense most people mean. The key terms are "hopelessness" and "suffering" which are both subjective and value-laden terms. I guess the AP reporters are using "terminal" so it all sounds much more clinical than it really is.
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posted
You always help us cut through all the B.S. in these stories, Stephen. And I, for one, really appreciate that.
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On the bright side, I have a short commentary coming out in the journal/magazine (?) "Foreign Policy" in November. It's a reaction to an essay by Peter Singer.
Among other things, I charge that euthanasia serves a Capitalist utopian vision. e.g. - encouraging the suicides of people whose labor has already been exploited to the fullest (the elderly) and add nonvoluntary killing for those whose labor will never be of the exploitable kind (people with severe disabilities).
When it comes out, I don't think too many conservative Republican sites will be linking to it. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I'm not sure how to interpret what you've posted, sndrake. Are you really saying that conservative Republicans are such die hard capitalists that money is all that matters to them? I know it has a winky at the end, but I'm just confused by what you wrote.
Re: the Netherland's decision, considering that all of us are terminal, I'm not sure how this can't be a slippery slope they're sliding into.
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quote: I'm not sure how to interpret what you've posted, sndrake. Are you really saying that conservative Republicans are such die hard capitalists that money is all that matters to them? I know it has a winky at the end, but I'm just confused by what you wrote.
What I know through sad experience is that the Religious Right - and most who identify as Republicans - seem to be very uncomfortable when class issues come up, no matter how valid they are.
The assisted suicide advocacy organizations in this country are organizations of the affluent. Very little ethnic representation. This comes from their own data from less than ten years ago in a little volume of ethnographic data on the Hemlock Society.
Prolifers in this country want to stress religious vs. secular in this particular debate. Well, it's not that clear.
But what is clear is where the impetus for policy change comes from regarding euthanasia. It isn't from minimum-wage workers, struggling single moms, the African-American community, or the labor unions. It's mostly coming from the most privileged - and white - people in our society.
Which also describes the majority of the people reporting on the issues in the media.
So, I was only half-kidding. Religious conservatives really aren't likely to promote any kind of analysis that describes the euthanasia battle as being (at least in part) the rich against the poor.
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Yeah - I hope you were only kidding, Stephen.
While the right maybe be in favor of the free market economy, etc. -- they usually put the sanctity of life way ahead of that.
There are a lot of "religious right" people who are neither rich, nor "capitalists" (in the way you are defining them). I'm a "struggling single mother" (as you phrase it) yet I'm not with the left.
I'm being unclear, I think. In regard to the lack of enthusiasm for euthanasia (as a legislative priority item) - that is a criticism aimed mostly at Democrats. The rank and file of poorer folk they've regarded as their "core" don't have "right to die" issues high on their plates. But rich white democratic donors care about the issue a lot. And that's why, for example, California democrats have now adopted formal pro-assisted suicide stance.
As to your assessment of less privileged prolifers, I think they do their best to ignore the conflicts between their own prolife values and, say, Bush supporters who don't care at all about abortion but loved the idea of emptying the budget surplus and lower taxes (remember when we had a budget surplus?).
I also remember how many Christian conservative commentators used the following comment when defending Terri Schiavo's life:
"When you have a family who is willing to take her home and take the responsibility themselves..."
I wondered then and I wonder now how they would have felt if she had been dependent on Medicaid funding. That's not an idle thought.
Here's an example. Missouri Republicans are patting themselves on the back for passing new restrictions on abortion in that state.
At the same time, though, they've changed medicaid rules so that feeding tubes and ventilator equipment are "optional." People can apply for an exception, but the approval rate has been low and that has only been for those who know how to go through the bureaucratic procedure to reapply.
quote:I hope they at least salvage the stem cells from all of the babies they kill in this way.
and the vital organs.
You're not the first person to come up with this idea, Jacare. Here's an excerpt from an article by someone whose name you might recognize. The remarks without italics in the beginning are my own:
quote:Before he started aiding the suicides of oppressed, despairing ill, old and disabled people, Kevorkian was most well-known for his campaign to start a new "ethic" toward death and human experimentation. He began his campaign in the 1950s, urging legislation that would allow death row prisoners to elect to be put to death through general anesthesia. There was a catch, though. They would also have to agree to be kept alive for hours or days while surgical experiments were performed on them.
Kevorkian's advocacy wasn't limited to death row prisoners and it wasn't limited to people who could express a wish to be killed. Below is an excerpt from a 1988 article in which he describes examples of "daring" experiments that could be performed if his system of ethics were to be adopted. The example below is the last of eleven examples. I've also included his remarks following the "case example."
A full-term infant born with spina bifida, paraplegia, and hydrocephalus is transferred, once proper consent and authorization have been obtained, to an obitorium for research hitherto conducted in rats be researchers interested in the hepatic metabolism of prostaglandin. Test material is given to the anesthetized infant by stomach tube. Two hours later the abdominal cavity is opened, and the intact stomach, small intestine, and liver are removed separately for preservation and subsequent processing for chemical analysis. Meanwhile the infant's heart and lungs are removed for transplantation elsewhere.
The above fanciful events credibly exemplify several almost self-evident points. First, obitiatry would make it possible to conduct daring and highly imaginative research beyond the constraints of traditional but outmoded, hopelessly inadequate, and essentially irrelevant ethical codes now sustained for the most part by vacuous sentimental reverence. Second, the proposed innovation should be extolled by animal rights advocates, because it would eliminate the need for animals now sacrificed unnecessarily in many aspects of academic and industrial research. As a corollary, the advocated practice wold minimize inadvertent human pain and suffering in the conduct of experimental clinical trials of new drugs, devices, or procedures by serving as an intermediate buffer stage between those trials and the first probing experiments on laboratory animals. Finally, taken together, these advantages not only represent a substantial easing of the strain on research budgets; but much more importantly, they help accelerate the medical progress so highly prized in our time. (p. 9)
Kevorkian, Jack. The last fearsome taboo: Medical aspects of planned death.Medicine and Law, vol. 7, pp. 1-14
posted
Yeah, boon, that's how I felt when I first read Kevorkian's stuff - he used to be a prolific writer.
This is a real shocker for audiences. I use these quotes in overheads. This is pretty good evidence of the general failure of the media.
In spite of all the media coverage Kevorkian has gotten, this side of him never really came to light. Why not? The major networks don't have research departments?
My point is, given how much Kevorkian has been covered in the media, this stuff shouldn't come as a surprise - if the journalists had actually been doing their jobs. But mostly, they weren't and aren't.
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There's a dentist named Dr. Kevorkian in Glendale.
His ads always crack me up.
That's totally off-topic, but I just can't deal with that quote right now, and I've been doing enough throwing up, so I'd rather talk about how funny it is that there's a dentist named Dr. Kevorkian in Glendale.
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quote:When you have a family who is willing to take her home and take the responsibility themselves..."
I wondered then and I wonder now how they would have felt if she had been dependent on Medicaid funding. That's not an idle thought.
I won't speak for everybody, but when I said similar things it was directed at Michael Schiavo, the idea being, if he didn't want to be burdened with caring for his wife then why not divorce her and let her parents take up the burden as they obviously wanted to.
A person's dependence on Medicaid would never influence whether or not they deserved to live, in my book.
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There is a difference between the merchantilism that neo"conservative"s favor and capitalism. Capitalism tries to use government to promote competition; and supports the commons and the common social welfare. Merchantilism tries to use government to promote individual and group monopolies; splitting the commons amongst those monopolies, and dispensing with the idea of societal obligation to those less fortunate.
If TerrySchiavo desired that her parents retain the right to decide medical care in the event of an inability to decide her own care, she wouldn't have transfered that "closest kin" right through marriage to Michael. If TerrySchiavo expressed a wish for cessation of medical treatment in the event of irrecoverable coma or persistent vegetative state, it would be unethical for her husband to transfer his responsibility -- to decide whether to carry out his understanding of her wishes -- through divorce.
posted
We're not here to argue the Terri Schiavo case, which is over. I was merely trying to clarify my own position, in case Stephen was referring to me, because I think I said something similar to the comment he quoted before on this forum.
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quote:If TerrySchiavo desired that her parents retain the right to decide medical care in the event of an inability to decide her own care, she wouldn't have transfered that "closest kin" right through marriage to Michael.
She did not transfer the right to decide to remove food and water to Michael.
The "decision" is required by law to be hers; the husband must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the wife wanted nutrition and hydration removed. This is not the same at all as it being his "decision."
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I was definitely NOT referring to bBlle or anyone on Hatrack. When I referred to commentators, I was referring to Christian Conservative pundits appearing on news shows during the Schiavo media frenzy. My reason for suspicions with that crowd is well-founded, especially when we look at what Missouri Republicans have done with people who depend on public funds for life-saving technology.
I'm sorry for any confusion. I'm tired and overwhelmed. I have a *lot* to do between now and my DC flight on Monday.
One of the many ironies of my life is just how much I travel these days and how much I hate doing it.
PS - Dag, you know you're just going to annoy aspectre when you respond with accurate information. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Stephen, I meant before now to thank you for your response to my question. It was very thoughtprovoking, which is, frankly, an understatement that can't be properly conveyed via text.
I wish I had something to say in response, but I really don't. I'm kinda struck dumb.
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