June 15, 2010

Is we so surprised?

And That�s How You Keep Health Care Costs Down When Government Runs the System — Penraker:

A high proportion of deaths classed as euthanasia in Belgium involved patients who did not ask for their lives to be ended, a study found.

More than 100 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in �terminations without request or consent�.

Although euthanasia is legal in Belgium, it is governed by strict rules which state it should be carried out only by a doctor and with the patient�s permission.

The disturbing revelation� -� which shows that nurses regularly go well beyond their legal role� -� raises fears that were assisted suicides allowed in Britain, they could never be properly regulated.

Since its legalization eight years ago, euthanasia now accounts for 2 per cent of deaths in Belgium� -� or around 2,000 a year....

The really scary thing about this is not the deaths but that one sub-group of humanity can be killed without formality. Can become non-persons, NOT by debate or decision, but just by a swing in public opinion. Those nurses didn't listen to debates on euthanasia, and then reach a decision. I'd be willing to bet money they didn't give it any thought at all. People don't. They absorb popular ideas, and treat them like truth. if the popular whim includes killing people, then the modern miss will kill them with less squemishness than whe killing cockroaches.

And I bet if you had told the Belgian legislators who debated and passed the law that they were on a slippery slope, and that soon inconvenient oldsters would be whacked with no more formality than killing a fly—they would have scoffed at you.

AND, I bet a lot of those "nurses" would describe themselves as pacifistic or "anti-war," and deride as barbaric the idea of killing people. And probably donate to prevent cruelty to animals and the wearing of fur coats..

AND AND the sort of people who like this kind of thing will assure us that tis is the very last situation in which termination of the unwanted will even be contemplated. Babies, check. Old people, check. But nothing else will happen. Scout's honor.

Posted by John Weidner at June 15, 2010 10:48 PM
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