Hollywood loves assisted suicide and euthanasia. Not just as a plot device, but to promote through its various products as a modern, caring, compassionate, and proper policy for society to accept. Perhaps the most notable example was the Clint Eastwood movie Million Dollar Baby, that carried a terrible and explicit message that dead is better than disabled. (Here’s my take published in the Weekly Standard.) Most major network television programs have had clearly pro assisted suicide episodes, including Law and Order, ER, and even Star Trek Voyager.
I have a good radar when a show is heading into that territory. That’s why I cringed last night as Secondhand Smokette and I were watching Medium. [WARNING: PLOT SPOILER ALERT.) But to my surprise, the episode, called “Pain Killer,” explored the dark side of euthanasia rarely considered by Hollywood writers. A physician, who had previously saved the psychic lead character Allison’s life (don’t ask), has taken it upon himself to mercy kill her dying friend. She “sees” what happened in one of her psychic dreams and confronts him. In words that were almost exact quotes from some of the cold, utilitarian justifications uttered by Jack Kevorkian, the doctor tells her it is a professional obligation to decide who lives and who dies, indeed, that even patients don’t necessarily know in such situations, what is best. Later, Allison’s husband rightly calls him a sociopath. (One of the best jibes I ever heard regarding Kevorkian, said he was a “mass murderer” whose victims came to him.)
Eventually, the doctor murders his boss by simulating a heart attack to cover up his crimes. When Allison accuses him and notes that the murder had nothing to do with mercy, he breezily asserts that it is important he remain free to save lives, and that the killing was justified even though not a matter of mercy, because he has greater societal value than a pencil pushing bureaucrat.
Now, assisted suicide activists would say that this has nothing to do with their agenda. They would be right about the murder of the boss plot twist–although some utilitarian philosophers might go along with placing a higher value on the life of someone like a physician over those with lesser social utility. But non voluntary euthanasia is definitely part of the euthanasia agenda.
The two ideological pillars of euthanasia/assisted suicide are radical individualism and killing as an acceptable answer to suffering. In the second, is a seed that grows into disdain for suffering people, which leads some to eventually cast aside the “choice” angle. Indeed, each year in the Netherlands (as I explain more fully here), about 800-900 patients who never asked to be euthanized are murdered by doctors. The practice even has a name; “termination without request and consent.”
Illustrating the danger of euthanasia consciousness, these doctors are rarely prosecuted, are never meaningfully punished if they are convicted–two week suspended sentences are typical–and I have not heard of one case in which the murdering doctor even lost his or her medical license. Indeed, the Dutch Medical Association always leaps to their defense, warning darkly that punishing doctors would chill euthanasia practice.
Euthanasia/assisted suicide is a dangerous culture changing movement. How refreshing that a major network television program focused for once on the peril of allowing doctors to be killers as well as healers.
October 10th, 2009 | 2:13 pm
Impressive. Actually, another surprising anti-euthanasia episode occurred on the show Dexter on CBS. Dexter, who kills murderers who have escaped justice, kills a nurse who had been mercy killing her patients. This is a huge contrast to CBS’ Cold Case, which featured an episode in seaason four in which a woman kills her husband, who is suffering from cancer. The police investigator finds out but keeps it quiet, and the woman is shown running with her boyfriend in the closing credits. It’s too bad the CBS had to place it’s one anti-euthanasia episode in a show that features a serial killer as a protagonist, but it’s better than nothing, I guess.
October 10th, 2009 | 3:28 pm
[...] original here: Rare Anti Euthanasia Episode on Medium » Secondhand Smoke | A … Share [...]
October 10th, 2009 | 7:00 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Marco Meijboom. Marco Meijboom said: #DutchNews Rare Anti Euthanasia Episode on Medium – First Things http://tinyurl.com/yhujj2o [...]
October 10th, 2009 | 8:37 pm
Hey Wesley! You’re slowly bringing some of your old friends out of our spiritual woodwork!~
Now how do I write so that your editor and chief allows this to be posted cause if The Holy Spirit allows what I really think about what is taking place, well let’s just say that there must be a spiritual cell of my brother Joe running around in our time zone but believe “IT” or not he’s dead!
There’s so much I could say and/or write but I’ll simply write that for “whatever”, I mean whatever reason that I have not seen “Million Dollar Baby” and “IT” is probably because sinner vic is a male chauvinist ham but he just won’t admit “IT” to this generation until he becomes sixty six so please pray for him.
So I don’t get too far off topic on a Saturday night and call me crazy but many of my cells just love to dance and I’m sure they’re out on the town right now shaking their booties. :)
All kidding aside Wesley! Clint Eastwood is no more responsible than I am for having allowed humanity to kill my dad at an early age and please don’t tell sinner vic cause that would just make his day, if you know what I mean?
Each and everyone of my cells could write for ever but tell me, what good would “IT” really do cause we all have free will so I will simply close now. Go Figure!
I hear ya Wesley! Have you been drinking again Victor?
Just a little!
For what “IT” is worth just keep doing what you honestly believe is right in your heart and soul cause you’re not really crazy, “IT” is the rest of the world! :)
Peace
October 11th, 2009 | 11:59 pm
The “Medium” episode should not surprise regular viewers of the show. Since the digital signal in June, I have allowed my screen to go black, so I haven’t seen this one. The show is a production of Kelsey Grammar’s company (one of the few Hollywood conservatives with clout) and is often unapologetically pro-family. Allison Dubois’ brother is even a Afghanistan veteran. The show is liberal but in a more old-fashioned way. The premise is clever and the show’s plots equally and usually consistently so. And given the premise, it is definitely not sentimental. In fact, when the dead are children, it is downright tough to watch. Surprisingly, the show is made by the creator of the old — and silly but entertaining — MOONLIGHTING from the eighties. A completely different tone of work here, but still playful.
October 12th, 2009 | 7:01 am
Now I finally found the anti euthanasia episode. Nowadays, many people agree with the euthanasia, but there can be a lot of side effects. I really appreciate with the anti euthanasia episode on medium!
October 12th, 2009 | 9:27 am
“The two ideological pillars of euthanasia/assisted suicide are radical individualism and killing as an acceptable answer to suffering.”
That’s a rather broad statement, not to mention that the conflation of euthanasia with assisted suicide, and suicide with murder, is intellectually dishonest.
And then there’s the terminology. What, pray, is “radical individualism”? “Radical” by whose definition? When does individualism become “radical” as opposed to, well, simply “individualistic”? Are you claiming that my life is not mine to end if I so choose? Are you implying that someone or something has a better claim to my life than I? If so, who or what?
You ought to define these terms more thoroughly instead of simply flinging them around.
October 13th, 2009 | 3:29 pm
[...] of an “anti-murder” episode than really an “anti-euthanasia” episode, but this article on Secondhand Smoke makes a really interesting case for the [...]
October 15th, 2009 | 11:12 am
“Radical individualism” is simply the belief that one is absolute master over one’s own life, having the personal license to spend it and/or end it as one chooses. It describes freedom from anything, not freedom for anything.
The Catholic Christian answer is that one’s life is not one’s own to end, because life itself is a gift of God. We are created for a divine purpose, with freedom to choose our part in it and act upon it in many different ways. (The idea that one has only a single divinely-appointed path and not a multiplicity of them is closer to pagan notions of Fate.) The cultivation of the virtues widens our freedom as it aids us in choosing and carrying out that purpose; the vices hinder us and lead us astray, narrowing our freedom and enslaving us to baser instincts.
It is because we still accept that notion that we can still say it is wrong that a man without any family should drug himself into a permanent stupor or drink himself to death. The logic of radical individualism demands that his choice be of equal moral worth to a life spent bettering himself or one spent serving others.
It is radical individualism that makes natural the conflation of euthanasia with assisted suicide and suicide with murder. Once the principle is established that avoidance of discomfort is an acceptable reason to discard a life, then the only remaining issue is who at the time has the standing to decide.
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