Earlier today, I posted this funny Bizarro comic on a SHS feature called “Secondhand Smoke Funnies.” But Dr. Kenneth Stevens of Physicians for Compassionate Care caught a deeper, if probably unintended, message in the strip that I missed. (Curse you for your greater sagacity, Dr. Stevens!) From his letter to me (republished here with his permission):
I was going to send today’s Bizarro strip to you ( the doctor with the gun) but you beat me to it with having it on your blog today. I think it ties in with physician conscience. What if that procedure with the gun is legal, but the doctor is anti-gun, should he remove himself from medical practice because his conscience is against using a gun on a patient?
Pieter Admiraal, M.D., leader of The Netherlands euthanasia movement said: “You will never get accustomed to killing somebody. Writing a prescription is like giving a patient a loaded gun and just asking him not to shoot before you leave the house.” [American Medical News 9/15/1997]
Bingo. Legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia holds that it is a medical act for doctors to directly kill the patient or help the patient kill him or herself. Thus, if poison pills or a lethal injection can be considered “medicine,” why can’t a Colt 45 be deemed a palliative medical device?
That aside, just as no one would force a doctor to shoot a patient who wanted to die, so too society should not be allowed to force doctors to assist the suicides of their patients.
July 14th, 2009 | 7:12 pm
When Schiavo murdered Teri by starvation, it was pure barbarism. [Editor's note: Legally, it wasn't murder.] It would have been much more humane to have a “feeding-tube removing” ceremony without actually removing the feeding-tube. Then Mr. Schiavo could return in 18 days and blow Teri’s head off with a 45 pistol.
But no, we can’t do it that way. We have to sanitize our murders. We have to distance ourselves psychologically. Like Mr. Schiavo, we aren’t man enough to admit that we’re pulling the trigger.
July 15th, 2009 | 11:01 am
>>[Editor's note: Legally, it wasn't murder.]
The nazis made the same defense at Nuremburg.
July 15th, 2009 | 3:23 pm
Drew: As the saying goes, the minute you begin evoking nazism you’re admitting you lost the argument. You obviously haven’t got a clue about the definition of murder.
Wesley: I just can’t see a .45 taken seriously as a palliative device, though God knows there are enough handguns floating around America to put every terminally ill person out of his/her misery several times over. Drug-induced suicide — especially by prescription — offers distinctly less opportunity to bungle the job by missing a vital organ, or worse, killing one’s next door neighbor by accident. Then too, drugging oneself to death is noiseless, doesn’t mess up ceilings, carpets or wallpaper, and usually requires significantly less cosmetic effort by the undertaker. On a cost/benefit basis one round of .45 ammunition costs about the same as a lethal prescription of a generic drug. No, all things considered gunshot really isn’t the way to go.
July 15th, 2009 | 5:06 pm
Come on History Writer: You aren’t that obtuse. But a gun is as much a medical device as a poisonous overdose. Hey, use a shotgun to the head. No chance of screw up there and its much quicker.
But better get a prescription for the buckshot.
July 15th, 2009 | 7:47 pm
History Writer,
Changing the “legality” of murder doesn’t change the killing into non-murder. Sure, one can argue that its technically not murder because its legal. But now we’re at Nuremburg.
>>As the saying goes, the minute you begin evoking nazism you’re admitting you lost the argument
Actually, this non-response is an admission that you’re not addressing my argument and, thereby, losing the argument. Try addressing my point instead of responding with a lame dismissal.
July 15th, 2009 | 9:43 pm
Drew:
The point is that “murder” is a legal term. You can misuse it, or you can use it correctly, as you wish, but murder is simply a type of homicide. Not every action that brings about the death of another is murder. Mr. Schiavo did not “murder” his wife by having her feeding and hydration discontinued after she had been comatose for more than a decade. If you are familiar with the case you would know that Mrs. Schiavo did not have a health care directive, and that after hearing evidence from numerous witnesses as to statements she had made earlier, a court determined that her intention would have been to discontinue food and hydration had she been competent to do so. Her husband was empowered by law to make the decision for her, and the court upheld his rights. If you believe so firmly that Mr. Schiavo murdered his wife I suggest that you write out the entire accusation and publish it in a local newspaper. Good luck — and I hope you have an attorney who’s competent to defend you in a libel suit.
Concerning Nuremberg, an observation: some lawyers believe it would have been far simpler to hang the ranking Nazis on the basis of Germany’s unconditional surrender than to invent new categories of crime to try them for, and to negate a soldier’s traditional defense that he was “only following orders.” You may recall that this jurisprudential novelty worked to our great disadvantage 30 years later, at My Lai. But then, that seems to be what happens when judges legislate from the bench.
July 17th, 2009 | 5:00 pm
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/murder
The 1st definition of the verb “murder” has to do with the law. The second definition:
to kill or slaughter inhumanly or barbarously
Plainly, i’m not misusing the term.
>>her intention would have been to discontinue food and hydration had she been competent to do so.
Yeh, uh-huh. Doesn’t everyone want to be starved/dehydrated to death? i can see it in writing:
When i’m no longer competent to make my own decisions, please give me no food and water so i can die a slow and painful death.
You really think a competent person would request that? Once again, why didn’t we have a “feeding tube removing” ceremony? Then 3 weeks later, let Schiavo blow her head off with a .45?
July 23rd, 2009 | 10:11 am
Drew: You’re missing the point. Terri Schiavo had as much pain-recognition capability as a person under a general anesthetic. Most of the areas of her brain responsible for cognition were gone. Deteriorated. Absent. In layman’s language, she was permanently “out to lunch.” You could have dropped an anvil on her and she wouldn’t have known it. So PLEASE — stop with the “painful starvation and dehydration” nonsense.
July 25th, 2009 | 12:19 am
HW, you have no way of knowing any of that. You think but you don’t know. Perhaps, we should side with caution by assuming the worst.
You want to make sure that her murder was as painless as possible then use the .45.
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