Quick Takes – Euthanasia: Killing Kids; Killing The Mentally Ill; Killing The Senile

     Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.

     The focus this time: When your choice isn’t really your choice.

     First, a little mood music:

     Because toddlers can totes consent to having themselves killed…

“Terminally-ill children between the ages of 1 and 12 will likely be granted access to euthanasia, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge told Parliament on Tuesday. End of life procedures carried out by doctors in the Netherlands were already possible for infants up to one year old, and for children above 12 years old.

“De Jonge said that the termination of life should be possible for ‘a small group of terminally ill children who agonize with no hope, and unbearable suffering.” It will affect between five and ten children per year who suffer “as a result in some cases unnecessarily, for a long time, without any prospect of improvement.’ He stressed ‘the great importance of the best possible care for this group of terminally ill children.’”

     It’s not discrimination to not kill people who can’t consent to end their own lives or something…

“It used to be that psychiatrists and psychologists strived to prevent mentally ill people from committing suicide. Now, a blog post by Canadian psychiatrist Ralph Lewis published in Psychology Today — of all places — understands that allowing the mentally ill to be euthanized could have a deleterious impact on suicide-prevention efforts. But what the hell. Refusing to euthanize the mentally ill is ‘discriminating’:

“And yet, how can we justify discriminating against people with mental disorders and suggesting to them that their suffering is more tolerable than that of people suffering from physical disorders? And how do we paternalistically tell them that we do not consider them under any circumstances to be competent to determine their own life values and to appraise whether their life is worth living? How many of those people will end up dying alone by suicide in ways that are much more traumatizing and stigmatizing for their families?”

     Quick, gotta kill ‘em before they find a cure!

“In the Netherlands, Belgium, and soon in Canada, people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s can order themselves killed once they become incompetent. Or they can receive euthanasia before that time.

“Meanwhile, our domestic assisted-suicide zealots teach elderly people how to commit suicide by self-starvation, with the agony of such a course palliated by a doctor — known in euthanasia parlance as VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking). There are even legal moves afoot to allow advance directives to be written legally ordering caregivers to starve dementia patients death — even if they willingly eat! Nevada has passed such a law.

“If new treatments do materialize, how many dementia patients will have died by their own or others’ hands who might have lived if they had continued on until new treatments came on line? I shudder to think.”

     TTFN.

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