As someone who relies on the health service and the state for my survival, I simply have a healthy distrust of giving either of them any more power over my life – and death – than they already have. Though some people want the right to die, many of us are still fighting for the right to exist. That’s why I’m part of Not Dead Yet, an international network of disabled people who oppose a law that would give the state and the medical profession potentially even more involvement in many ill and disabled people’s lives.
This brings a question I have no answer for: How much is too expensive to live? To idea that life is a right that the government, and by extension society, must pay for is relatively recent?
ReplyDeleteCan academics solve a Talmudic teiku?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Zakhar-G-Maymin-80967226&ved=2ahUKEwj_9uWXwoCKAxWfW0EAHdX8K7EQFnoECCMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3ifQa2UO7P0GdHWfOV0RTj
Summary of the solution
Deletehttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80106893.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjB6enQw4CKAxXZnf0HHdQbHYAQFnoECBUQAQ&sqi=2&usg=AOvVaw2Sm2HVt09Oz4R8WWyY84Ne
You know the old story about how sin is like a hot bathtub? First time you pull back because it's too hot! Then you ease yourself in carefully because it's hot. And after a few minutes you're in there enjoying yourself because it's so comfortable and hot.
ReplyDeleteDoctor-assisted-murder (DAM) is like that. When Canada first introduced it, it was exclusively for people who had a couple of months to live and were experiencing horrible suffering that no medicine could treat. Yes, we couldn't agree but we could sympathize and understand. But we live in a culture where, if the government gave me ten bags of manure, my neighbour would scream "Why didn't I get five bags too!"
Now we're at the point where doctors doing DAM are no longer solemn or hesitant but straight out enthusiastic. They are preventing suffering! Death with dignity! Saving the world (and the taxpayer who covers ongoing medical expenses)! In the last year I've seen headlines where people complain that when they call to order DAM there's a 1-2 weekl waiting period before they can meet their executioner. We have to wait?! And the licensing authorities worry that not enough doctors do DAM so there will have to be encouragement to get other doctors to do it. I've been told by Orthodox med students that in some schools they were asked during their admission interview if they'd be okay with training to do DAM and if not, maybe they should go to a different med school.
But should we be surprised that a society that has no problem with killing unborn babies could justify killing everyone else?