Monday, November 06, 2006
Killing children for the family
In The Times today, but online here as a Sunday Times report. We have more of those brave lifesaving doctors seeking to kill our children.
Yes they want the power to kill: "...seriously disabled newborn babies." These arguments are of course phrased in the nicest possible way and we're told it's for the "good of the families" makes a change from telling us "it's for the children" I suppose, but it's the closest thing they could get to without spelling out that final irony.
Somehow the article appears on Sunday, but the "story" has been placed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology, which I suspect doesn't work over the weekend. So for me the placement of the story over a weekend as opposed during the week is also cynical manipulation. I can see some "PRO" being delighted with this one being argued over the Sunday roast.
The report in the paper is itself seriously biased: "Geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal — as did the mother of a severely disabled child — but a prominent children’s doctor described it as “social engineering”." So all geneticists and medical ethicists support the proposal do they? However one single doctor is against. He must be mad.
"Initially, the inquiry did not address euthanasia of newborns as this is illegal in Britain..." makes it sound like Britain might be the only country in the world where this medieval attitude to life exists, as opposed to the fact that it's probably illegal in most of the world and most of the civilised world. Whereas the exceptional county the Netherlands is reported as the norm and is described as "mercy killing". Why not describe it as our legal system would describe it? In terms of criminality.
Despite very little balance in the article, trouble has been taken to get an opinion from a Dutch "doctor". "Dr Pieter Sauer, co-author of the Groningen Protocol, the Dutch national guidelines on euthanasia of newborns, claims British paediatricians perform mercy killings ..." Really? Well if he has information on crimes (especially serious ones) being committed in this country we should issue a european arrest warrant, get him over here, find out what he knows and see if there's evidence to bring charges.
When all's said and done, no one can decide what life is worth living and what life is not. The essence of being a living person is that you are an individual, as an individual you might rate a certain experience as brilliant, someone else might think it rubbish or stupid. All this "euthanasia" talk and "mercy killing" boils down to is killing people with the potential for different life experiences; should we nuke the third world who have nothing but starvation and poverty to look forward to? Surely it would be merciful? It seems to me there are some members of the medical profession who seek to have this ultimate power over people, the power to legally kill them. It's one thing to kill a criminal convicted by due process of law and justice of for which he knows the penalty, but here we're looking at killing people for having the misfortune to be different. No one can judge it and no one can decide. It certainly isn't a competence for any "doctor".
Yes they want the power to kill: "...seriously disabled newborn babies." These arguments are of course phrased in the nicest possible way and we're told it's for the "good of the families" makes a change from telling us "it's for the children" I suppose, but it's the closest thing they could get to without spelling out that final irony.
Somehow the article appears on Sunday, but the "story" has been placed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology, which I suspect doesn't work over the weekend. So for me the placement of the story over a weekend as opposed during the week is also cynical manipulation. I can see some "PRO" being delighted with this one being argued over the Sunday roast.
The report in the paper is itself seriously biased: "Geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal — as did the mother of a severely disabled child — but a prominent children’s doctor described it as “social engineering”." So all geneticists and medical ethicists support the proposal do they? However one single doctor is against. He must be mad.
"Initially, the inquiry did not address euthanasia of newborns as this is illegal in Britain..." makes it sound like Britain might be the only country in the world where this medieval attitude to life exists, as opposed to the fact that it's probably illegal in most of the world and most of the civilised world. Whereas the exceptional county the Netherlands is reported as the norm and is described as "mercy killing". Why not describe it as our legal system would describe it? In terms of criminality.
Despite very little balance in the article, trouble has been taken to get an opinion from a Dutch "doctor". "Dr Pieter Sauer, co-author of the Groningen Protocol, the Dutch national guidelines on euthanasia of newborns, claims British paediatricians perform mercy killings ..." Really? Well if he has information on crimes (especially serious ones) being committed in this country we should issue a european arrest warrant, get him over here, find out what he knows and see if there's evidence to bring charges.
When all's said and done, no one can decide what life is worth living and what life is not. The essence of being a living person is that you are an individual, as an individual you might rate a certain experience as brilliant, someone else might think it rubbish or stupid. All this "euthanasia" talk and "mercy killing" boils down to is killing people with the potential for different life experiences; should we nuke the third world who have nothing but starvation and poverty to look forward to? Surely it would be merciful? It seems to me there are some members of the medical profession who seek to have this ultimate power over people, the power to legally kill them. It's one thing to kill a criminal convicted by due process of law and justice of for which he knows the penalty, but here we're looking at killing people for having the misfortune to be different. No one can judge it and no one can decide. It certainly isn't a competence for any "doctor".
Tags: euthanasia, abortion, killing, life
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
