“Mercy”-KILLING in the Netherlands
Posted by PunchTheBag on 1 December 2004 | 9 responses
Yes, the sky can start to fall, the camel can get its nose under the tent, and snowballs can start avalanches. Good ol’ Holland and your stupid wooden shoes. You weren’t worth liberating in WWII.
9 Responses to ““Mercy”-KILLING in the Netherlands”
This has been going on for years in the Netherlands, with thousands of people dying each year as a result of doctors actually murdering them because they believe it´s in the patients´ best interests. Much of that information of which has been published in “The Remmelink Report”
Cheers
Robert Duncan
Nor are sinners worth liberation by God. Through Christ, he freed us anyway.
“You weren’t worth liberating…”
Classy.
“Measures that might marginally extend a child’s life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely; namely, every day,” said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in the US. – AP”
Why do we americans think we are better than the rest of the world? The hypocrisy is amazing! We do exactly what we criticize others for, we just don’t own up to it!
I’m on PTB’s side for this one. Not that “you weren’t worth liberating” is such a classy way to put it… but he does have a point. The real challenge for those who support abortion is not to sneer at stuff like this–but to answer precisely where and how a certain medical procedure turns into murder.
It may well be an answerable question, but it won’t be amenable to slogans.
“The real challenge for those who support abortion is not to sneer at stuff like this–but to answer precisely where and how a certain medical procedure turns into murder.”
It’s weird to me that this stuff is so shocking to conservatives. Personally, what I dread is a pain-striken, miserable existence, not death. Put me out of my misery, for sure, if I’m ever in any of the situations described in the story. If a doctor, with the experience to know these things suspects I have no hope, pull that plug.
On the other hand, I find “collateral casualties” shocking beyond belief, and most conservatives have no idea why. They can’t understand why I think it’s evil for the military to, say, drop a bomb on a city block to kill one person (i.e. Saddam). Why can’t I trust the military’s judgement — after all their job is to protect us!
In THAT case, many conservatives totally understand why one person can decide another must die. Collateral casualties aren’t even a question, generally — the real question is how happy can you be that you’ve got a military who’s willing to go kill people for you. Sure, maybe they get it wrong sometimes. But the fact that they’re out there, being brave, making the tough choices, excuses any resulting tragedies.
But if a DOCTOR decides someone should die, oooh, suddenly he’s almost certainly wrong — we should have waited.
Here, here Aaron!
Hypocrites, all of you, conservatives, pro-Bush, pre-emtive dogmatic sheep.
I don’t think that abortion is the right issue to come at this with — all the doctors, etc. would agree that the infants have as much of a full prima facie right to life as adults do — but rather the issues of physician-assisted suicide and how best to respect the rights of those not in a position to assert those rights themselves. Suppose that you think that there are circumstances, such as extremely painful terminal illness, under which one ought to be able legitimately to seek the aid of a physician in ending one’s life. And suppose further that you think that it is an obligation of both the state and of one’s family to make decisions on behalf of those patients (such as infants or the profoundly impaired) who are unable to make or express decisions on their own, and to do so in a procedure that is designed to take into consideration only what we the patient might have decided for themselves, were they able. It arguably follows, from those two suppositions, that we have the obligation to decide on behalf of terminally & painfully ill infants, whether or not to give them physician-assisted suicide. Not that they should do so in all such occasions — but the option should be on the table, and probably should be pursued under at least some such circumstances.
I find both suppositions — the right of individuals to physician-assisted suicide, and the obligation of the state & family members to make decisions on behalf of the profoundly incapacitated or immature — pretty defensible. And I find it hard to see how to avoid getting from them to the theoretical consequence of a limited form infant euthanasia. It nonetheless may still follow that no practical set of procedures may be implementable, given the extremity & irreversibility of euthanasia, which we think could sufficiently safeguard the interests of the infants.
Echoing Aaron’s comments, though in a somewhat different area, I find it interesting how one can always find something abhorent in the what someone else does, while continuing something that the other person finds abhorent.
To provide another example, the gist of this blog item is that the “killing” of people for whom a normal or tolerable life is not possible, is morally wrong. But based on the principle that euthanasia is only allowed when anything approaching a normal life is no longer possible, the Dutch, as well as much of the rest of the world, find the US practice of the death penalty completely abhorent. What gives the state, or anyone, the right to destroy a life that is eminently livable, on the basis of a demonstrably imperfect legal system?
I’m all in favour of continued debate around these sorts of ideas. But for crying out aloud, before you adopt a better-than-thou attitude, it’s worth remembering that in the eyes of the ones you’re criticising, you’re the one acting immorally. And you’d be amazed at just how much more cordial international relations would be if this principle was taken to heart.