I suppose this shouldn't really be a surprise, but it's useful to have it documented. In Flanders, where active euthanasia is legal, doctors are killing nearly as many people without their request as with it. The study (based on the doctors' own answers to a questionnaire) found that the people killed without their own request were primarily 80 years old or more and were usually unable to be part of the "decision" because of dementia or coma.
While the authors of the study make some feeble gestures in the direction of wishing to reduce the number of terminations without request, their preferred solution is...ta-dum!--end-of-life planning. In other words, if we can just get the old people to say ahead of time that they want to be killed if they become demented, then when we kill them later, that will be with their consent. Problem solved.
Call me cynical, but I can't help wondering how happy the study authors (or the Flemish doctors) would be if the end-of-life planning with lucid elderly people resulted in unequivocal statements that they did not want to be actively terminated under any circumstances. And, a more chilling question: Would that really result in fewer terminations without consent?
Then there's the matter of drug advice. The study authors found that a number of the doctors who stated that they used drugs with the intention of actively terminating the patient were using opioids, and the study authors are of the opinion that the opioids used may, despite the express intent of killing, have not actually hastened death. (Darn!) And then there's the other problem, that patients may "regain consciousness" and that the procedure may "take longer than expected." They recommend educating doctors better about the nature and action of opioids. It's difficult to read this in any way other than the way that Wesley J. Smith reads it--namely, that doctors should be taught to use quicker, more effective drugs for killing their patients.
It's worth remembering that, under Flemish guidelines, doctors are legally required to have explicit requests in order to kill their patients. Why, then, do we find only such mild concern in the study that finds the reality so different from the theory? And why is the recommended action not prosecution of the doctors for breaking the law but rather increased pressure on patients to make living wills sooner?
I'm afraid the answer to these questions is only too depressingly obvious. The advocates of choice aren't really all that het up about the negation of all choice by direct murder without consent.
Comments (19)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
...sigh
Posted by DmL | May 24, 2010 11:44 AM
or "grow" - should probably be grow. : )
Posted by DmL | May 24, 2010 11:45 AM
There's a silver lining to this cloud. Once the pro-aborts over here start campaigning for killing the elderly without their consent, we can ask: "So only those who want to kill have a choice?" Under Obamacare, that day is not far off. The circumlocutory answers to the question will be entertaining, if nothing else.
Posted by Michael Liccione | May 24, 2010 11:49 AM
Once the hypothetical, "but why would anyone want to live that way," becomes the guiding star for end of life decisions, it means that "no rational person would want to live that way." It follows, then, that the person who resists being euthanized when he or she is in that state is not being rational and thus is not capable of consent. Thus, he or she is euthanized for his or her own good.
Principles have their own logic, and they eventually get cashed out given enough time.
"Consent" based bioethics that rely on hypothetical scenarios in which consent to the procedure is assumed "obvious," ultimately undermine consent. Or, as Lydia puts it, "Choice devours itself."
Posted by Francis Beckwith | May 24, 2010 12:17 PM
From such a death deliver me O Lord
Posted by jack | May 24, 2010 12:52 PM
Strange that as we become more caring human freedom and life mean less and less.
But then, we've turned much of our morality over to Administrators & Regulators. And what we have turned over we are not getting back.
Posted by johnt | May 24, 2010 1:14 PM
Very shrewd observations, Frank. What usually makes it hard to pin down is that no one expressly reasons (say, in court) the way you just put it. They don't say, "Ah, well, you must be being irrational in that case, so you don't have the capacity for consent." But I agree with you that this is in the back of many minds. In fact, I think that sort of reasoning lies behind many "choice devours itself" scenarios. "A woman should have the right to choose an abortion. In fact, an abortion is often the best thing. Like now, when my teenage daughter is pregnant. Dammit! Why can't she see that it's the best thing? Thank goodness I'm the parent. I'll just have to insist."
I should find the link: Wesley Smith posted an interesting article a few months ago by a doctor who had a conversation with one of his patients about end-of-life decisions. The patient wasn't in an end-of-life situation, but the doctor was trying to get things settled ahead of time. The patient didn't agree with the doctor. (The doctor doesn't say who thought what, so it's a conjecture that the patient said she would want more done than the doctor would want to do, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's the way to bet.) They went back and forth a bit, and eventually the conversation ended with no agreement. The doctor said something to the effect that "this is the beginning of the conversation." In other words, the doctor intends to keep on badgering the patient (indefinitely?) to change her mind. I thought that was rather interesting.
Posted by Lydia | May 24, 2010 1:15 PM
You no doubt recall the number of times Catholics have had to deal with progressives who want to "dialogue" on a settled point of doctrine but really mean, "We keep talking until you knuckle-dragging outliers cave in to our demands." This sounds like that with a kind of, "Shut up and die already!" quality.
Posted by Scott W. | May 24, 2010 1:26 PM
I agree with Francis Beckwith. And I stand by my prophecy that IQ will be the next (new) way to tell who should be aided towards death. We didn't develop this human-sifting stuff for nothing, you see.
Posted by The 27th Comrade | May 24, 2010 6:39 PM
Lydia, is the phrase "choice devours itself" yours, or did you chance upon it somewhere else? I love it.
Posted by Michael Liccione | May 24, 2010 7:02 PM
Thank you, Mike. It's mine own, originated in a post dated February 8, 2006 on the now-defunct blog Right Reason. Others better with the Wayback Machine can probably get the arcane archived link faster, but I imagine I can dredge it up too. (Right Reason has not maintained its archives on-line, but the Wayback Machine enables one to find things like that with a little search anyway, since they were nabbed by Google bots.) I also have the post and all the comments captured in a Word web page document and have thought seriously of putting up the original main post here, though by now many of the thoughts have appeared here at W4 already.
It was inspired in part by C.S. Lewis's thoughts on Denis de Rougemont--mis-paraphrased as "When love is made a god, he becomes a devil."
Posted by Lydia | May 24, 2010 8:19 PM
Here's the old post, with just the beginning of the comments:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060319224241/rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2006/02/choice_devours_1.html
Posted by Lydia | May 24, 2010 8:55 PM
You no doubt recall the number of times Catholics have had to deal with progressives who want to "dialogue" on a settled point of doctrine but really mean, "We keep talking until you knuckle-dragging outliers cave in to our demands." This sounds like that with a kind of, "Shut up and die already!" quality.
Scott, absolutely right. It started back with the modernists, whose idea of "dialogue" was to keep throwing out one (bad) idea after another till it looked to the uninitiated like there was a real debatable issue. Then they could go around saying "well, this is one of those still-under-debate kinds of issues, so there is no specific position that a believer is obliged to adhere to." Dialogue used as a blunt instrument for beating over the head.
Posted by Tony | May 24, 2010 11:40 PM
I expect that this sort of thing will become increasingly common, both on utilitarian "moral" grounds and for simple economic reasons. Since the Europeans have effectively aborted and contracepted themselves into demographic collapse, institutionalized euthanasia like this is going to become all but inevitable. The facts are plain: they simply cannot support welfare entitlements for their aging population with their sub-replacement-level workforce. There is, I think, a grave and tragic irony in all of this. The aging generation didn't want to deal with the encumberances of family and children and so they made free use of non-procreative sex and abortion. In coming decades, the younger working classes won't be able to live out their own chosen "lifestyles" because they are going to be taxed rapaciously in order to pay for the all of the welfare entitlements for the elderly. Karmic payback in the form of calls for euthanasia in order to keep the costs under control.
Posted by Untenured | May 26, 2010 11:52 AM
What I find amazing about this is that so many Christians, especially Catholics and Orthodox, can stare straight right at the rotten fruit of every single, solitary last society that has embraced the welfare state and not categorically condemn it as anti-Christ. In every single such society, birth rates are ruined, divorce is the norm, promiscuity is rampant, drug and alcohol use are high, you name it. The spiritual fruit is just pure poison.
Posted by Mike T | May 26, 2010 4:03 PM
Mike T, I know. I tried telling something like that to those of my Christian acquaintances who favored some sort of federal health care guarantee (okay, let's admit it--favored something far more like European socialized medicine), and they _would not listen_. It's amazing.
I thought I was the queen of nominalistic arguments that begin, "Well, it isn't a necessary logical consequence of _________..." but it turns out I've learned better than to make much of that line of thought when it comes to the real world. Some people never have.
Posted by Lydia | May 26, 2010 4:08 PM
On a somewhat related note, Lydia:
That comes from an article about protests over NYC allowing a mosque to be built on the site of the WTC.
I have to outright question the "wisdom" of any priest who thinks this is wise for two very obvious reasons:
1) It is absolutely antithetical to the Christian value of living peacefully with your neighbor. It is a power kick in the face to the people who died there, their families and many of the residents of NYC who are incensed about it.
2) It stirs up triumphalist passions in those Muslims who either are apathetic toward peace or support jihad. Quite frankly, you'd have to be an illiterate, tone deaf moron to not understand the symbolism of this to much of the Islamic world, especially the militants.
The pattern I see here is a complete lack of discernment. This, welfare, you name it. They are so addle-brained by liberalism that they cannot even see how they are fertilizing the very plants that will bear bad fruit.
Posted by Mike T | May 27, 2010 10:10 AM
2) It stirs up triumphalist passions in those Muslims who either are apathetic toward peace or support jihad. Quite frankly, you'd have to be an illiterate, tone deaf moron to not understand the symbolism of this to much of the Islamic world, especially the militants.
But they ARE tone deaf and illiterate. Illiterate in the sense of being able to read anything at all without reading in to it their own preferred story-line about "peace-loving" whatever. If a terrorist who is not holding a gun (yet) says "I want to kill every Christian", what they impute as his meaning is "because of age-old oppression of someone back in the middle ages (someone I probably would have murdered if he was my neighbor, but let's leave that aside), I hate you westerners now, but my hate can be soothed if the oppression is reversed and you admit your cultural guilt, your ethnic inferiority, your religious evil, and your national submission to my will." Hey, that's good, it means you don't really want to kill me after all.
Posted by Tony | June 1, 2010 8:13 PM
Certainly, lack of discernment is huge. And I think it comes from wanting to be part of the mainstream culture. Wesley Smith has a good post up right now about Catholic organizations endorsing futile care theory. Are they nuts, or what? Yep.
Posted by Lydia | June 1, 2010 8:42 PM