I am trying to raise the alarm that current bioethical policies and advocacy promote the objectification of human life and the denigration of human exceptionalism. This episode is in To The Source, where I discuss organ harvesting coupled with euthanasia. From “No Longer Science Fiction:”
When Jack Kevorkian advocated harvesting organs from assisted suicide victims in his 1991 book Prescription Medicide, people were appalled. What could be more dangerous than giving depressed people with severe disabilities the idea that their deaths would have greater societal value than their lives? Then, when he actually acted on his beliefs, stripping the kidneys of Joseph Tushkowski, a quadriplegic ex police officer Kevorkian assisted in suicide, offering them at a press conference, “first come, first served,” people were stunned. Who could be so ghoulish? Article Link However, Kevorkian’s macabre notion had turned a key in the deadbolt. The idea of coupling euthanasia with organ harvesting began to receive respectful consideration in medical and bioethics professional journals.
I give a notable example with quotes. I then segue from Kevorkian’s supposed fringe approach to mainstream medicine in Belgium:
Opponents of legalizing euthanasia—of which I am one—were well aware of these and other articles, which served to normalize the idea of coupling physician-prescribed death with organ procurement and transplantation. But, we knew of no cases where the deeds had actually been coupled. So we waited, fearing that the shoe would drop, but praying it would not.
Clunk! That sound you just heard was the euthanasia/organ harvesting shoe slamming with great velocity into the hardwood floor. Writing in the journal Transplant International (Vol. 21, p. 915, 2008) several physicians reported that they had participated in the euthanasia and concomitant organ retrieval of a totally paralyzed woman
I point out that a team of bioethicists in Europe are proselytizing tying the euthanasia followed by organ harvesting of people with progressive neuro/muscular diseases. I conclude:
Apologists for the euthanasia/organ harvest protocol defend the idea based on the procedural requirement that different medical teams be involved in the euthanasia and the organ harvesting. But that supposed protection is meaningless. Once a society decides that some of its members have a life of such low quality that it is acceptable for doctors to kill them, and once these patients—many of whom already feel like burdens—learn that they can save lives by their suicides, the seductive pull of asking for euthanasia/organ harvesting could reach gravitational strength. We have entered exceedingly dangerous territory, made the more treacherous by doctors and bioethicists validating the ideas that dead is better than disabled and approvingly recounting how patients can be viewed as a natural resource. If we are to avoid devolving into a Kevorkian-style society, we must resist the siren song of euthanasia/assisted suicide at all measures.
I warned about this possibility in my very first anti euthanasia/assisted suicide column in Newsweek, in 1993. People said it would never happen. And now that it is, many don’t care. But I think most people still do. The problem is getting them to actually see the storm that is coming.
March 31st, 2011 | 2:29 pm
I am in my mid-thirties, Wesley, and I have to tell you that I get a whisper in my ear, every so often, to just be prepared for what will be happening when I am an elderly person. The suffering. I am hoping to raise my sons (and daughters, if I have any) to do right by their parents and protect them, but none of us can know what the future will hold for an individual. For groups of people it is easier to predict. I predict suffering: Elderly, disabled people, children. I am not talking about the inevitable and human experiences of illness and disease, but the far greater, terrible suffering of being neglected, rejected, reduced to body parts and even killed by those who are wholly convinced of their own rightness.
March 31st, 2011 | 4:50 pm
Miserable. Last night I watched the old B&W Twilight Zone episode, “The Obsolete Man,” where a man was declared obsolete for being a librarian, believing in human dignity, and believing in God. Anyone who couldn’t contribute, in that fictional society, was obsolete, and condemned to death. What you’re talking about, Wesley, is making people obsolete – they can’t contribute, so they don’t deserve to live. Even if they want to serve the State, if they can’t contribute the way the State wants, they must die.
Read a fiction novel (I’m sick as a dog, I haven’t got much else to do) where human babies were being cloned and grown in cows, brought to term, and then beheaded immediately after birth to use chemicals in their brains to make a cancer cure. The idea of playing Frankenstein with dogs and cats wouldn’t appeal. I know people who protest the idea of trying to make a cross-breed cat/dog hybrid. I wonder if they’d be as appalled by raising babies to harvest.
My pro-choice best friend agrees with me that if we have the tools to make organs and such from adult stem cells, then get away from embryonic stem cells and from human harvesting. Most people agree that human harvesting in any form is bad, right up until you mention certain undesirables. For example, harvesting from condemned prisoners. Or from Down Syndrome babies. Or from blacks. (Although I know of at least one KKK website where the idea of a white man getting a black man’s heart is considered an abomination…) Every person is undesirable to someone else. I’m Italian. Someone else is Irish. Someone else is French. Somebody doesn’t like people that are Italian, Irish, and French, and it’s fine in their eyes for those people to get treated like they’re objects.
I hate being sick, I hate seeing stuff that makes me snarky when I’m sick. I hate that my stuff doesn’t make sense. Bah on everybody. *sits in the corner and sucks her thumb unhappily*
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
March 31st, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Yes, Tabs, but forewarned is forearmed. That is why good SF novels serve as prophets.
Burgess Meredith plays the role you referenced, who is Ob-So-LEET! It is one of my favorite TZs. (I think I have seen them all, and many times.) Another great Meredith TZ was when he played a near blind banker who couldn’t deal with people and only wanted to read. He’s in the bank vault when a nuke hits. He ends up, however, in bliss because the library books were not destroyed. He piles the books and shivers with anticipation at all the reading he will do. Then, he trips and breaks his glasses. Serling loved those ironic endings.
Tabs Fine Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 12:32 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
“Time Enough At Last!” I love that one.
I think it’s very telling how “The Obsolete Man” ended.
“In God’s name, I WILL let you out.”
That right there was an image of human dignity, to the very end of his life.
My father died in a coma, asleep, but never alone. He wasn’t aware of his surroundings, but he was loved, he was cared for in his own home, and he died with dignity – REAL human dignity – in his own time, in his own way, at peace and treated like what he was: a valued member of the family. He’s STILL a valued member of my family, even though I can’t see him anymore.
Nobody harvested anything from him. Nobody worked to hasten his death to “spare him pain.” We managed his pain and we kept him with us, out of love and out of respect for his humanity, and because he was out beloved Dad.
Two different deaths, my father’s and the fictional TZ ending of “The Obsolete Man,” but they were both views of *real* death with dignity. Not euthanasia garbage.
Kathleen Lundquist Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 2:31 pm
@Tabs Fine,
Thanks for sharing that, Tabs – I’m very encouraged by it.
(And I love TZ, too.) :-)
March 31st, 2011 | 6:29 pm
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March 31st, 2011 | 11:17 pm
I am in my mid-thirties, Wesley, and I have to tell you that I get a whisper in my ear, every so often, to just be prepared for what will be happening when I am an elderly person. The suffering. I am hoping to raise my sons (and daughters, if I have any) to do right by their parents and protect them, but none of us can know what the future will hold for an individual.
This is what is wrong with our current fetish for certainty – so much so that we’ll settle for pretending we know more than we do rather than face the awful horror of uncertainty.
We have becomes so terrified of uncertainty that we will throw whatever we value most away altogether rather than risk the pain of having our unrealistic expectations violated.
holyterror Reply:
April 1st, 2011 at 8:29 am
@Blake,
Blake: Very well said.
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