Sunday, March 06, 2005
Comparisons
Straight Up With Sherri reminds us of the slippery slope between things that went on in the Third Reich and some tendencies today between cost analysis and right to life for those who are more vunerable:
Nowadays there are people calling for the sick and injured to give up their lives as a duty. Doctors in Denmark sometimes euthanize people without their or their family's consent. We depersonalize them, deprive them of selfhood and legal rights, say they are vegetables, so we can do what we want with them.
Today, we show our barbarism in allowing cases with no living will to choose for death, and even sometimes require the death of a person after they ask for life because they once claimed for death. This is the situation in the case of Terri Schaivo, where her husband, years after the fact, claimed that she didn't want to live with life support (although she's only on food and hydration, and basically healthy other than having trouble swallowing).
What difference between a court system that puts down a basically healthy, if brain damaged woman, by killing her in a quite painful method than the Nazis, who killed large numbers of damaged people?
The Nazis at least used quick killing methods instead of working with the fantasy of a person voluntarily giving up food and drink until they die.
Straight Up With Sherri reminds us of the slippery slope between things that went on in the Third Reich and some tendencies today between cost analysis and right to life for those who are more vunerable:
During the same period that Hitler decreed the Rhineland sterilizations, a German medical economist pointed out, in an article entitled 'The Fight Against Degeneration,' that the care of a deaf-mute or cripple cost 6 marks a day, that of a reform school inmate 4.85 marks, and that of a mentally ill or deficient person 4.50 marks. The average earnings of a laborer, on the other hand, were only 2.50 marks, and those of a civil servant 4 marks daily. (The exchange rate at the time was about forty cents -- 2.50 marks to the dollar.) The economist lamented: 'The state spends far more for the existence of these actually worthless compatriots than for the salary of a healthy man, who must bring up a healthy family,' and hinted that it was too bad that a more radical program than sterilization could not be employed.
Then, instead of coming out and just legalizing the killing of these people, he just...............Legalized it. He wrote this on his personal stationary:
ADOLF HITLER Berlin, 1 September 1939 Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are instructed to broaden the powers of physicians designated by name, who will decide whether those who have - as far as can be humanly determined - incurable illnesses can, after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death./signed/ Adolf Hitler
Nowadays there are people calling for the sick and injured to give up their lives as a duty. Doctors in Denmark sometimes euthanize people without their or their family's consent. We depersonalize them, deprive them of selfhood and legal rights, say they are vegetables, so we can do what we want with them.
Today, we show our barbarism in allowing cases with no living will to choose for death, and even sometimes require the death of a person after they ask for life because they once claimed for death. This is the situation in the case of Terri Schaivo, where her husband, years after the fact, claimed that she didn't want to live with life support (although she's only on food and hydration, and basically healthy other than having trouble swallowing).
What difference between a court system that puts down a basically healthy, if brain damaged woman, by killing her in a quite painful method than the Nazis, who killed large numbers of damaged people?
The Nazis at least used quick killing methods instead of working with the fantasy of a person voluntarily giving up food and drink until they die.
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